Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Before making this weak attempt at sarcasm you should have consulted a dictionary and understood the difference between patents and trademarks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
These patent procedures are really impossible to understand.
THere are a lot of things in this world that are not easy to understand. quantum electrodynamics, reinnman geometry, organic chemistry, tort law, female psychology. Just because you haven't mastered an understanding of something doesn't mean it should be discarded or it isn't very useful.
Items that are revolutionary can be protected, temporarily, by hiding the process.
It is amazing how bad an understanding of history people have. What you are describing is the practice of trade secrets as existed prior to the invention of the concept of the patent. We have been there and done that. It doesn't work.
Use competitiveness instead of force to earn your future.
Your model would completely eliminate any economic progress. Large companies would be free to copy an idea, use it in their products and use their market position to crush any new ideas. I cannot imagine a more disasterous idea.
There is such a thing as licensing you know.
Problem is that current patent law sees no problem with sitting on a patent and refusing to entertain offers to license. Title 35, United States Code, section 271(d). Though laches is potentially an effective defense against patent trolls, it has become much too hard to prove laches nowadays.
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.