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Another NTP Patent Invalidated
darkmeridian writes "Bloomberg reports that the PTO has granted a non-final rejection of a third NTP patent asserted against Research in Motion in the Blackberry litigation. Five patents have been asserted against RIM, and only one of the three rejected has been found to be valid and infringed. Yet this development helps RIM as it seeks to avoid an injunction against operation of the Blackberry network pending appeal."
With the next generation line of blackberries
As European, i still don't get what is so new to the Blackbarry "called" push technology. We have text messaging for years (called SMS here) and now that it transmits eMail, they patent it.
It just shows that software patents suck by definition.
It's a race between RIM's last defences against a shutdown verses the remaining patents of NTP being blown away. Stay tuned while we take this commercial break...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
We have text messaging for years (called SMS here) and now that it transmits eMail, they patent it.
SMS is basically a good old-fashioned text pager that works entirely on the phone network.
BlackBerry is more like an e-mail client that works on the phone network.
I don't know if either deserves a patent, but SMS and BlackBerry are really quite distinct.
Research in Motion was the leader in a lot of this patent litigation.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958550.html
I remember them suing over everything, Good technology, handspring with the treo, etc etc.
In this case, NTP is clearly just a patent litigation machine which is worse, but everyone's been using these patents to muscle around in the marketplace...
Why don't they just invalidate them all? It would send a message to patent holders that patents are to protect legitimate business activity and filling frivolous patents for stuff you never plan to build is not tolerated. Then the world might actually respect the patent system.
These patent procedures are really impossible to understand. There are so many confusing patents that no one, not even the PTO, can wade through them all. Is it fraudulent for companies to try to take advantage of the legal use of force that patents offer?
There's no solution to this government atrocity except complete dismantling. Before I was a believer in anarchocapitalism, I thought the best solution was to file a patent and immediately pay a tax on sales, a tax that increments every year until the company releases the rights. I see taxation as theft, so I don't support that process anymore.
My solution? Obfuscation. There is nothing that truly needs a patent (not even prescription drug research once you consider the high ost of regulations). Items that are revolutionary can be protected, temporarily, by hiding the process. The more a competitor wants to knock off your product, the more they'll need to invest to figure it out.
Let's forget even protecting secrets. Thousands of competing patents cover competitive products, but the patented features don't sell the product. What sells it? Ease of use, marketing, quality, safety and support. The patented portion supports very little in terms of sales.
Some Korean bootlegger released a $50 iPod knockoff already. It is a piece of junk. Apple has little to fear because their name sells product based on people's past experiences.
Just like long term quality content gets your website into a high position in the search engines, the same is true of products and services. Use competitiveness instead of force to earn your future.
In other words, they're parasuits.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Since when did geeks decide that the product of intellectual effort had no value? Is this a left over from being beat up too many times in high school by the jocks? Who said only physical product had value? Manufacturing is a solved problem. Making something new is hard.
When you invent something you can post here that you gave it away to the world and watch other people build a business on your ideas. If you ever have any, that is.
Very few people combine both the entrepreneurial and the inventors' talent. "Patent litigation machines" allow both kinds to prosper independently. And give us the fruits of their innovation...
Supermarkets are not growing the foods, that they sell, either. Does not make them "evil"... Growing apples and selling them are entirely different vocations.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It seems to me you could get around the RIM situation by doing the following:
1. find the oldest net-based email-solution you can and use the source without any modifications whatsoever. (better yet use the binary if possible)
2. build a layer on top of it to interact with what is now a local app. It should be possible to use specific screen-grabbing, techniques, etc., that have been in existence for ages to avoid yet more patents.
3. wait for NTP to explain how you infringe their patent using source code that was written back in the dark-ages of the net.
Of course I have not read the actual patent (why should I when it will only give me a headache and someone else here will sum it up eventually), but it should be critical until the patent system changes to find ways to get a JURY to understand what is the difference between one technology and another. If all the patent does is take e-mail and "do it over the cell network", then it should be obvious to everybody (except a JURY it seems) that the application is the SAME (and by actually using an old application you can perhaps make your point), but SOMETHING ELSE is different. The cellular wireless network. And therefore, unless the patent covers the invention of a cellular wireless network, they should perhaps have the book thrown at them for various reasons I will not mention.
Retailers, grocery stores provide a clear value add (a.k.a. service): They *make the products accessible* to a broader marketplace of customers with shipping, inventory, marketing, establishment of quality name, et cetera et cetera.
Now compare that to NTP. They provide *no value add*. No work, no service, no accessibility, no publishing. If on the other hand, they make the ideas accessible to those who would like to license them, *that* would be a value add.
As far as I can tell, NTP simply held some patents (silently) until they saw a company that had done its own research and actually did the work to build a profitable business. *Then* they jumped on RIM's "infringement" of "their intellectual property".
I consider this to be the equivalent of a company like NTP staking out a legal but private claim for a piece of land in the middle of a public place, unmarked. Someone comes along and sets up a fruit stand in what they think, incorrectly, is legal open place. After investing effort in building their business, NTP comes along and says that the fruit-stand builders owe them 3 years in back rent.
The issues here are twins: 1) NTP didn't say anything to anybody about "their" ideas. 2) They waited until RIM had invested *big money* in their infrastructure, not knowing about the virtual landmine.
Classically, patents existed to enable the patent-holders to receive a return on their research investment and to get the ideas out into the world to serve as bases for conteinued economic development. NTP's behavior is exemplary of an economically abuse of the patent system.
It's worth noting that patent language is so impenetrable, and the numbers of patents so massive, that it (the patent system as it stands today) probably can no longer serve its original purpose. As a developer, how do verify that
a) my code doesn't infringe one of hundreds of thousands of software patents
b) If I discover that some element of my work happens to be patented by someone else, can I license it for a price that doesn't eliminate the remaining shreds of margin that I still have?
We would be much better off with no patent system.
No, you would likely have died young because no private enterprise would have had the financial incentive to develop vaccines to protect you from childhood diseases.
If someone makes a product and someone else copies that product then whoever supports their product the best and adds the most innovation will win and the other company will die off.
Do you understand how much work goes into the hundreds of failed chemicals before the one safe and effective drug is found? Do you understand how much work goes into proving to regulators (or, in a libertopia, to insurer associations) that the chemical is in fact safe and effective for diagnosing, treating, or preventing a disease? Or do you have some plan to compensate drug companies for research and development other than a temporary right to exclude third parties from producing the chemical?
On the other hand, I might agree with patent term discrimination based on industry, with drugs being awarded a longer term of exclusivity than algorithms.
I agree with the other assessment that you've misapplied trademark law to the concept of patents, but I'd like to point out that even trademark law goes too far. What if I'd like to decorate clothes with a swish? Nike'd get upset. I'm not trying to make people think my clothes are Nike's and wouldn't put the swish decoration in places where it could only be interpreted as a mark of trade and not a decoration, but trademark law goes too far. Same as if I wanted to decorate a shirt with two yellow half circles over a red box.
NTP's primary business is licensing patents that it owns. It makes no products.
This by itself should mean automatic invalidation. The purpose of patents is to encourage progress - what part of patent parking acheives this goal again please?
http://global.mci.com/resources/cerfs_up/fun/requi em.xml
And to think it's only been 14 years since NTP invented it.
Ever wonder why it's so rare that anybody with any influence over the patent system pays any attention to the rants and raves of Slashdot, free software, open source, etc.? It's because these groups very rarely, if ever, have a clue what they're talking about.
Before you reply to flame me, think about what the word "marginalized" really means. By refusing or not bothering to become educated on the issue of patents, a huge majority of Slashdot's readship marginalizes itself and renders its thoughts and opinions irrelevant.
"Non-final rejection" equals "invalidated"? That's a joke, right? Surely the article is a troll. Nobody with any self respect would seriously submit that as a story unless they were pulling a prank on Slashdot's editors.
Yet this development helps RIM as it seeks to avoid an injunction against operation of the Blackberry network pending appeal.
The judge in the case seems pretty reluctant to listen to RIM when it comes to the re-examinations going on before the PTO. The judge might still institute an injunction and that could force RIM to settle. This is particularly bad because if all the patents are invalidated then there would be no reason to have an injunction or a settlement and would cost RIM a lot of money. I think that if the judge does order the injunction RIM will go ahead and continue to appeal the process and prevent the injunction as long as possible.
The judge also refused to await for a decision in the MercExchange v. eBay case currently before SCOTUS that pertains to injunctions. RIM is still challenging to SCOTUS that they are not infringing because their routers are maintained in Canada and they are a Canadian company. Their argument may have some merit and it could just stop the whole case in its tracks. RIM has and will keep trying to avoid the injunction as long as possible, until the PTO cases go final or until SCOTUS makes a ruling in eBay case or decide to hear their case on jurisdiction.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
And here's a followup from someone else who actually knows the patent system from the inside-NTP can now amend the claims being reexamined and present additional arguments as to why the amended claims are now allowable over the rejection. If those claims are allowed they will now carry an extremely strong presumption of validity (actually, almost unbreakable) because of the reexamination. If those claims are still being infringed by RIM, guess what? RIM is totally screwed in court, and will have little recourse except to settle on NTP's terms. I have very little sympathy for RIM in this case, the course of action they have followed has burnt all the bridges behind them. They could have settled years ago, but have instead pushed this case to the limit. If they lose (and there's a very good possibility of that happening) they will have no one to blame but themselves. Of course, almost no one here will actually understand what I'm talking about but that's OK-those who do understand what's happening already know all this.
This is exactly what I mean by "broken patent system". By what measure does someone justify starting a business, whatever business that may be, when there are 500,000 nearly secret possible ways for that business to be subject to financial attack by unknown entities?
The current structure of the patent system can only work well when:
(Being a smartaleck here, I realize) That is *exactly* why I refer to my already slim margin on development costs: The way the patent system is currently organized, the required search is a substantial overhead. Enough that it calls into question the basic viability of small development businesses. Intentional or not, the current process is a potentially significant barrier to entry in the technical marketplace.
I agree absolutely that people should be able to benefit from their inventions. I agree absolutely that people should be able to buy and sell their inventions. But I continue ask one central question:
How can I know which of my ideas is already someone else's property? Remember one of the rules of patentability: That an idea is patentable only if it's not obvious to practitioners of the art. That's why I disagree with NTP: Their patents are obvious.
I think there are excellent software/process patents, by the way. Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA public key cryptography, quicksort (not patented by C.A.R. Hoare, but as a non-obvious and extremely creative algorithm, it deserved patentability), Feistel networks for simplifying encrypt/decrypt symmetry in cryptography). The common element of these processes is that they were real inventions, they took real research to build, and represented genuine work, which is what I mean by "value add".
I've looked at the patents, and being a mere developer and not an attorney, they *look* all nonobvious, but nothing in them is "new" for anyone who had ever seen a real network in operation. Delivering messages wirelessly to addressable remote devices... Yeah, real creative. I assume you have read them too. Do you think that they represent any development? (In 1980, maybe; in 1997, it was nothing new.)
Oh, boy... another RIM job!
Read the article summary I wrote. I didn't get to write the title the editors stuck on the article.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
HELO i.am.localhost
MAIL FROM: AnonCoward@slashdot.org
RCPT TO: thread@slashdot.org
DATA
Subject:CPAA
well, now that sending emails is patented I guess I wont telnet in and do it that way, lest the CPAA(Cell Phone Association of America) sues me for patent infringment.
.
I take it that NTP is not the same thing as "Network Time Protocol".
Because if ever there were a software paradigm worthy of patenting, NTP would be it.
The article summary is correct, despite what the parent says. He rails against why Slashdot sucks, but he does so in typical Slashdot style: without reading the article or the article summary. He read the title, then wrote a knee-jerk diatribe.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I think the argument that is frequently made against a compulsory licensing regime is that such a system may reduce the incentive to invent. When a patent holder refuses to license a patent it creates a huge incentive to design around the patent at issue.
And when it is proved impossible or grossly uneconomic to design around the patent, then the existence and threat of enforcement of the patent reduces the incentive to invent things that build upon the invention described in the patent.
The issuance of non-final rejections in a patent case before the PTO is all but routine -- indeed, it is rare that the PTO does not issue at least one non-final rejection of one or more claims in a patent application or reexamined patent. Please take the time to learn what a non-final rejection is and means. To suggest that mailing of an office action constitutes "invalidation" of a patent is to manifest supreme ignorance of the patent process.
Here is why clear and unambiguous language will not happen in patents...
Once you reduce the idea to clear language, the obviousness
of most patents will be strikingly obvious. Most patents will
no longer pass the laugh test, and would be rejected.
It sounded like you were saying that the delivery of messages
over a wireless link was non-obvious. Not sure if you meant
that or the reverse. To me, once you have the concept of delivering
messages down, choosing another medium to send it over seems the
height of obvious. I have not read the patents, so I dont know
if there is more to it than that.
emt 377 emt 4
Ok, you called me on it and I'm man enough to admit my mistakes. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that the person submitting an article also suggests the article title. I apologize if this isn't the case.
However, I was critical of the reporting on patents presented by Slashdot and I stand by that criticism. The Slashdot article, including the title, appears to equate a "non-final rejection from the USPTO" with "invalidating a patent" which is entirely absurd. Although this may not have been your intention, it is the appearance given on the front page of Slashdot. Given these circumstances, my criticism should have been directed at the editor and not you, the person who submitted the story. I apologize for that.
I meant to say that in 1980, the end-to-end concepts for delivering what is now commonly known as email was not nearly so complete as it was in 1997. In 1980 (or perhaps earlier), many of the inventions involved in routing, switching and the other tools in the now well-known Internet toolkit were not yet well-known, and establishing competent networking would have been a real invention, to say nothing of wireless delivery.
As of 1997, *everybody* with any experience in communications understood both the conceptual framework and specific techniques needed to deliver email or any other message-like information just about anywhere.
So, I agree with you: By 1997, when the NTP patent was filed, wireless delivery was obvious and the patent should have been summarily rejected.
"Since when did geeks decide that the product of intellectual effort had no value?"
Nobody said it had no value. We're just pointing out that these trivial algorithms are not worthy of patent protection. The value to society comes about when the product is commercialized as widely as possible.
Just another case of where a geek has to point out the obvious.
"Do you understand how much work goes into the hundreds of failed chemicals before the one safe and effective drug is found? "
5 92976-7960836?v=glance&n=283155, which is the chosen name because that's the fictional figure given by drug companies as cost to develop new drugs.
Drug cost a lot of money to develop because drug companies spend a lot of marketing and in high profitability to investors. There are a lot of sources for this information, but a good place to start is a book called "The $800M Pill" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520239458/002-8
What you'll find is that most of these discoveries come *not* from within the drug companies, but rather by scientists and doctors who are not driven by any profit motive.
Do you think the Bush administration is keeping out Candian drugs to support a fragile drug industry? Or is it because they're protecting the profit margins of largely American industries?
Think a bit and do some reading before you spout someone else'e fictional numbers.
I guess that's why, after nearly 5 years of articles related to patents, there's still people thinking that patents / trademarks / copyrights are the same thing.
And, NO, I will not explain it again.
year, those fucking parasites - independent inventors,
filing some papers with PTO and then wanting to collect
money from honest big corporations...
It is just sad to see how those corporate BS artists managed to turn even
an average clueless slashbot into their supporter...
In this particular case, however, it all depends on the validity of the patents, so just shut the fuck up for now and let PTO do their job properly this time...
No patents = say good-buy to all modern drugs...
.etc. etc., then undress and go live in the woods...
But that's not all: you must also turn off your computer right away,
trash your TV, IPod, etc
"Patents are for your design for doing something. A copyright is for an idea"
Why don't you read about patents and copyrights first ?
You are so fucking IGNORANT !!!
Do you smell that? It's the smell of US innovation rotting after a napalm attack by big business. Do we really think that innovation and technology can be maintained by big corporations? Old houses of innovation are forced by profit concerns to be very focused as compared to 50 years ago. Where's GE, Xerox, Tektronix, HP, Westinghouse, and Bell Labs for instance? Either dead, packaging other companies' innovations in their boxes, or limiting their work to a myopic focus. Those are just some examples, but with the crazed American business view that a good quarter = a good company, American innovation is grinding to a halt.
How does this relate? There are a legion of fed-up engineers who are innovating in their basements and are free thinking about new inventions. It's research that's not strangled by a typical American corporate quarterly profit model. If the small time inventor, like Thomas Campana, can't patent his inventions and defend it versus big money, it's just another nail in the coffin to US technology.Soon there really will be only service industry jobs left in the US. Manufacturing left in the 60s-80s. Engineering is starting to flow overseas as we discuss this. By the USPTO killing the small time engineer's patents, they are stymieing (sp!) a chance for engineering to evolve and survive here.