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RIM - The Whole Story
khendron writes "The Globe and Mail has published an article titled Patently Absurd, detailing the whole history of the RIM vs. NTP wireless war. It is a blow by blow account of how a dispute that could have been settled for a few million dollars is now 'a billion-dollar dagger hanging over RIM.' The article reads like a fairy-tale of egos, legal blunders, and patent stupidity."
no pun inteded, I guess.
Fleur de Sel
Never underestimate the stupidity of bean-counters, even more so that they run most companies nowadays.
While I'm not naive enough to think that the problem will get fixed any time soon, at least this will add another straw, and eventaully enough straws will be added to break the camel's back.
Oh, and by the way, NTP are bastards. I don't care about their cute little story. Nobody should be able to do a half-assed job and get hundreds of millions.
Ok...so...basically as pointed out in any number of the previous RIM/NTP stories, RIM started as a bunch of patent litigating bastards. Now...NTP attacks them with an equally moronic patent and suddenly we are all supposed to gather the horde, fetch the pitchforks and charge to RIM's defense because patents are bad. So...once this is over...and someone attacks NTP the same way RIM went on the attack, followed by NTP attacking, are we supposed to support NTP during their defense? This also brings up similar questions with SCO and friends...are we supposed to support SCO when they are attacked by the same litigious bastard types that they were being? I for one would like to see RIM get torn to pieces by this silly patent, partially as karma, partially as an example to the world how stupid this patent nonsense is getting, and partially becuase I just don't really like crackberries.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
You mean "Snow White, 6 Lawyers, and The One-Click Dwarf?"
I loved that one as a kid.
It's wonderful, but not worth a billion dollars
It is a blow by blow account of how a dispute that could have been settled for a few million dollars is now 'a billion-dollar dagger hanging over RIM.
That's a feature not a bug.
"Sexual identity is fundamentally meaningless," says Baudrillard; however, according to Pickett[1] , it is not so much sexual identity that is fundamentally meaningless, but rather the collapse of sexual identity. Werther[2] states that we have to choose between the textual paradigm of narrative and postmaterialist dialectic theory. Thus, in Robin's Hoods, Spelling examines precapitalist narrative; in Melrose Place he affirms dialectic submodernist theory.
The main theme of von Junz's[3] analysis of the textual paradigm of narrative is the futility, and eventually the fatal flaw, of textual reality. Bataille's critique of socialist realism suggests that the goal of the participant is social comment, but only if the premise of precapitalist narrative is valid; otherwise, we can assume that narrative must come from the masses. But if predeconstructive materialism holds, the works of Spelling are an example of cultural nihilism.
Any number of narratives concerning the difference between sexual identity and class exist. It could be said that the subject is contextualised into a textual paradigm of narrative that includes language as a reality.
The primary theme of the works of Spelling is the role of the poet as artist. Thus, Derrida uses the term 'socialist realism' to denote the meaninglessness, and subsequent dialectic, of neomodern sexual identity.
A number of theories concerning precapitalist narrative may be discovered. However, the subject is interpolated into a dialectic paradigm of consensus that includes narrativity as a whole.
where RIM does a demonstration in court to show that NTP's patents aren't valid, and then it turns out that RIM's demonstration is a complete fake. Judge wasn't happy.
I gotta say, it does look like RIM is the bad guy, infringing on NTP's patents.
If you read the Vaginas for Jesus Blog, you would have found out all of this long ago.
Plus, you could have ordered some of their delicious organic marinade, which is how they support their convent.
Support the nunnery and read a high-tech blog at the same time, what more could you ask for?
...are the legal rep's screwing both sides for all they can
Cheap UK and US VPS
Of course they're going to blame their destruction on everyone else now but I dont feel sorry for them. They shouldn't have violated the patents, they shouldn't have lied about a workaround and they should have settled when they had a chance. I personally hope they are destroyed.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
The Key thing is that's NTP's patent was a worthless piece of paper until RIM did the hard work and made a product that worked, and that NTP could try and scrounge some cash from.
Patent Trolling is not clever, it's a cancer in the patent system, just like submarine patents and software patents.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
I got this from a waitress friend of mine...
A lot of times, people come into the restaruant she works in and while she's trying to take their order and ask them things like: "What kind of dressing do you want, what do you want to drink, etc...", they'll be looking at their crackberry and findling with the butons. Of course, they're asking her to repeat what she said and thy always get pissed when their order isn't what they thought they asked for. So, to make their rudness fun, while she's (other waitresses are doing this, too) taking their order, she'll interject a "meow", as in a cat's meow. The contest amoung the waitresses is to see how many "meows" they can say to the crackberryheads before they say "excuse me?". It's really fun to watch!
I'm still confused about how someone could patent wireless email. Basically, you have email technology (POP,SMTP) and you have wireless data transport networks designed for general purpose use, IEEE, GSM, whatever. How is it considered an invention to simply use the network for what it was designed to do? I mean, what about wireless web browsing? Wireless DNS resolution? Wirless SSH/Telnet? Or Email over ATM? Email over ISDN? Email over DSL?
The real inventor of 'wireless email' is the original inventor of email plus the original inventor of a general purpose wireless networking protocol. Doesn't the patent office think that when a network is invented to move bytes, the original inventor envisioned email or any TCP/IP service to run on it? If the logic I am reading is true, wouldn't it technically be possible to patent any TCP/IP service over 'insert layer 1/layer2 technology here'?
As I see it - there are some reasons for patents today:
- Filing a patent to earn money from it's licenses
- Filing a patent to avoid anybody else to claim the patent and require you to pay.
- Filing a patent to kill off competition.
In any case - the real winners are the lawyers.One must always question - is it really worth the effort to file a patent. If the patent is refused - is the filing still valid as "prior art" and therefore sufficient to be able to avoid others to claim a patent and then kick you out of the market?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Brief summary:
Rim used to be the bastard. NTP is the bastard. Lawyers changed brilliant inventors into agressive beasts.
Conclusion:
the US patent system is bad for the US economy and bad for your ego.
*giant cane appears and pulls flok off the stage*
This poo is cold.
I can tell you I've been at several places and NONE of them have really concerned themselves with infringing on others' patents. The common rebuttal is that "we have patents too, and I'm sure we can find them [other company] infringing on ours somehow. Hence, we can "strike a deal" if a problem ever comes up.
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/
In the 80's and 90's IBM service reps ran around with something they called a "brick" which was a wireless device that they used to communicate with the main office, wouldn't that be prior art for RIM and NTP?
More importantly, if RIM was going after all of these other companies, then it was hardly "novel", right?
Neither company deserves a patent in this case (which appears to be the case with about 98% of all software patents).
After reading that blow by blow summary, I worry that many Research in Motion employees will have to say goodbye to their RIM jobs.
What a thoroughly ugly situation.
On one side we have a former innovator that decided to become a patent troll. I suppose if not for RIM, those patents would have just quietly turned to dust.
On the other, we have an actual innovator that produced a real product. It then learned that he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. They sure thought patent lawsuits were a good idea until they found themselves on the wrong end of one.
The big winners are the lawyers on both sides. The undeserving loosers are everyone who depends on this technology. Fortunatly, there are a few other ways to keep up with e-mail while mobile now.
Who could have scripted it any better? Company seeking to cash in on stupid patent is hoist by its own petard. The resulting patent dispute threatens communications between lawmakers who rely on the stupid company with the stupid patent, so they pass a law exempting themselves from the laws they created. Can they really outlaw their own karma? Stay tuned to find out!
Personally I feel companies that buy and sell patents as if they're some kind of property are a disgrace to everything the patent and trademark system was founded to uphold. They're not using the patents to innovate, they're just using the patents to extort money out of other companies. NTP should have all its patents stripped because it's quite clear they're nothing but a patent squatter.
Shhh! Be careful, or Disney'll get you for copyright infringment!!!11
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
but you know what they say: "Fill it to the RIM ... with Grim!"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They're the ones responsible for this whole mess, by granting obvious patents in the first place!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Does anyone have a link to the actual patent so the rest of us can be more informed in the discussion?
RIM has a real product which they have carefully designed, successfully marketed, and valued by millions of consumers. How does that make them "litigating bastards"? NTP sued them. RIM probably should have just thrown NTP a few million bucks and settled the case early on. The fact that they were too self-righteous to do so is a symptom of stupidity, not love of litigation. It's the Randal Schwartz at Intel syndrome, where some dweeb is so obsessed with convincing people that he's done nothing wrong, he just digs himself in deeper.
As for NTP: Sure, they exist now purely to enforce some absurd patents. But these are not you usual brain-dead "submarine" patents. They're the legacy of a serious inventor who spent his entire life trying to create better ways for people to communicate. No bad guy there.
The one bad thing here is that various people let their egos get ahead of their judgment. Which is something I see on Slashdot every day.
So I'm curious, can anyone recommend good blogs that discuss the problems of the current patent system and have good examples of crappy patents.
Now, this wasn't a criminal case, no need for no-shadow-of-doubt proof. All they really needed was the testimony of reputable experts telling the court and the jury there was an invention predating NTP's patent. Faced with contrary arguments from NTP, the court would have had to weight both parties according to the credibility of their respective experts. Now the patent office is re-evaluating NTP's patents and finding prior art. That would have been incredible new evidence to request an appeal. Unfortunately, RIM shot themselves in the foot already and no court want to revisit the matter.
Patent Wars - this sounds great to me. RIM starts patent lawsuits against some firms, then NTP starts a patent lawsuit against RIM. They can all go to hell, as far as I am concerned. I really don't like blackberry by the way, can't stand it. I know people who worked at RIM, and their experiences were pretty terrible. It's not a great 'inventors' company anymore. It stopped being an inventors company when it started its first patent lawsuit. They just got back what they deserved, no less. Of-course some good may come out of this in terms of a possible US patent law reform. Or maybe not. In any case, 10 years from now, when all those patents are expired, there will be more wireless communications devices spring to life here and there, and maybe I will like one of them more than I like blackberry.
You can't handle the truth.
it'd explaint the socialist attitude. See, in Europe NTP would get loads and loads of money for doing nothing more than sitting on their asses. That's the idea behind socialism, right? "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his laziness".
Unfortiunately in our Evil Capitalist world, comapnies have to actually create something to make money. RIM did. NTP didn't. If the judges on the case have any common sense, they'll tell NTP to crawl back under the rock they emerged from.
They shouldn't have doctored the demonstration of this, but they didn't need to demonstrate it at all. They were trying to drive home a point that was already obvious - someone else came up with the idea first. Whether or not it worked is irrelevant to patent status.
IANAL, but it seems that, while RIM or it's lawyers should have been punished for the indiscretion, I don't see how the court could use it as a basis for deciding the case against them.
That RIM -sees- NTP as a patent troll? And then goes on to say how they were specifically set up just to wait for someone to step on the land mine? NTP -is- a bunch of patent trolls!
This is about everything that's wrong with the US patent system. -Actually putting into successful production- the object of your patent, or selling it entirely, should be one of the major criterion for it remaining valid. Otherwise, you are just a patent troll, making the real inventors walk through your minefield, and then waiting to profit from their work when they step on it.
I'm glad RIM didn't settle, and still hasn't settled-so to speak. Maybe now we WILL get some meaningful patent reform.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
RIM used patents against other companies. Now, the tables have turned. Hahahaha.
I guess they're going to get "rimmed". LOL!
Bend over and open those cheeks wide...
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What's wrong with you?
I said this once in a post a while back when this started going down hill. I was a procurement manager for a large telecom and personally handled the RIM agreement. There was only one way the agreement was going to happen, RIM's way or the highway. This is no joke. The lawyers for the telecom company I worked for then called them "Canadian Cowboys". RIM was flying high (and still is) and they think they are invincible. If this article is correct in that RIM could have settled this for a few million with NTP, then this holds true to my dealings with them. No negotiations, just sign the contract or we leave. When your the top dog in this space you can do this but you will leave a trail of ill will in the process and this is a small world. I sure hope RIM gets humbled by this.
Dear RIM,
See how much software patents suck when you're on the recieving end?
Dear NTP,
Have you ever had the desire to work for your money?
Now, can someone remind me why there can't be two different pieces of software accomplishing a similar task in the "free" market? Wouldn't the laws of capitalism decide which one is "better"?
This "me first" junk has got to stop. If someone releases a better product and puts the first out of business isn't that just how the market works? Can McDonalds sue McDonalds for putting out a similar product? I personally am going to sue dogs around the world for having the same lung mechanism to inhale and process their oxygen... oh, that's right, I just need to get the patent first.
Ok, I'm raged out... for now.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
he is dead now and good riddance to such parasite on public. another warning to companies from other countries providing services in america. you will be trumped by *patriotic* americans in the name of mighty green washingtons.
"In 1992, Mr. Campana and Mr. Stout agreed to form NTP. The company was never about making things or selling things. It was about protecting potentially valuable ideas, some of which dealt with sending messages to wireless devices. And for nearly a decade, Mr. Campana's patents lay dormant, just waiting for RIM to produce the BlackBerry."
Protecting from what? Protecting from someone who independently envisions and creates the idea? That's called following through with an idea. That's called innovation. Something NTP never bothered to do because they were too lazy and/or lacked the ability.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
"A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
This line of thinking does not work with today's high-tech.
Any modern high-tech product (e.g. cell phone) is a combination of
literally hundreds of patented inventions.
Any single patent holder is not allowed to build the whole thing,
he is only allowed to exclude others from using his patented feature by enforcing his patent.
Those patented "features" can be essential to the operation of the whole device (e.g. CDMA modulation, vocoder voice compression etc.)
Thus, in today's world nobody can build anything wothout cooperating with
other patent holders...
I'm curious about the demo that pissed off the trial judge. Does anybody know exactly what they did? What I wonder is whether it was truly a fraud or whether they used more recent software for innocuous reasons (e.g. they didn't have all of the original environment) and the demo was actually valid as evidence that the old technology worked?
"He was not the greatest businessman in the world," Mr. Campana Sr. concedes. "Even when his business was going broke his employees never missed a day's pay. He went home without paying himself."
Mean while RIM in Nov. of 2002, to meet the finacial quota, layoffs followed;
http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/article/824
To be more balanced, here is the timeline on RIM vs NTP stories/posts;
http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/search?quer y=RIM&topic=&author=
I am not defending NTP or RIM, however this seems awfully a lot like history being repeated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth (Father of TV)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstron g (Father of FM radio)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci (Father of Telephone)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole (Father of Digital Age)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diesel (Father of Internal Combustion Engine)
All died with tregic end, without entitlement or recognition or compensation for their life's work while they were alive, only to be stolen and profited by thieves and corrupt hands of greed.
This may sound naive and to some "slashdotters," idiotic, but I value true human story in history more so than the profit margin or success of marketing and public opinion. The truth is, Mr. Stout and Campana are robbed from their rightful entitlement as Mr. Stout successfully demonstrated his idea through practical usage and only to be failed as business venture later on. This does not mean that Mr. Lazaridis didn't have any valuable input for this technology. However as patent is to protect the legitimacy of an idea, our legal system should validate that entitlement, not manipulate and craft to falsify the technical validity of original idea of the inventor.
I don't personally care for how many lines of code are there, regardless if it's 16 million lines or 16 billion lines to make BlackBerry work flawlessly. This patent isn't about who has how many lines of code or how much work has been put in or how much money it made or how important it is on fight against "terrorist." It's about the innovative idea and technology.
Other point is that often people are too quick to judge that patent itself is wrong, however without patent, non-profit driven, non-corporate endorced, average inventors and innovators of technology become faceless, only to be digged up later to be found in history book as many Open Source developers and programmers may face later.
Or are we all that naive that one day, giant corporations and investers will dig up the holder of the original idea their proprietary software/technology benefited from in oder to share the profit and entitlement? Will FOSS and GPL ever have enough backbone or teeth to enforce its ideal and fight legal battles against billion dollar corporations'?
What if Farnsworth became billionaire with his invention, what change could we have seen in today's TV broadcasting? What if Armstrong could have made his FM radio available to millions, what different sound could we hear over the radio today? What if Meucci and not Bell profitted from telephone, what could have happen for today's telecommuncation industry? What if Boole's idea was taken seriously and valued as later Claude Elwood Shannon, nearly 70 years later, found it to be, what could we have accomplished in today's computing industry? What if Rudolf Diesel was alive and prospected as Ford, could we have seen cars running on vegetable oil mor
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
So, if the patent system is going to be reviewed who'll be doing the reviewing? A few "experts" will be called in. They'll be USPTO staff and lawyers. Niether of these want the system to change (unless it is to make it even better [from their perspective]; hint: not everyone else's perspective).
The same goes for any beurocratic function that keeps the practitioners employed. The tax system won't get simplified if the tax accountants can keep it complicated.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Guy invents the technology, can't really do much with it because it seems that there are other bits of technology that need to be invented before his idea can work. (NTP)
RIM, who basically invented the same technology much later when there is a much more robust wireless platform and CPU to deal with this sort of thing, invents the technology and then starts suing competitors because "we invented it first."
NTP digs a few dusty patents out of a drawer and says, "no, dipshit, we did."
Meanwhile, at this moment in time, there does not appear to be anything "unique" about RIM's technology, and it appears to be "obvious" from the perspective of 2006. Heck, VeriChat, a AIM/Yahoo/MSN chat client for the Palm appears to work essentially the same way.
Sounds like RIM is getting a karma job. They would have been in the right up until the point they started suing other companies. That made RIM a "patent troll" in my book.
But, yeah. Only the lawyers are gonna win on this one.
They won the patent, they can do with it what they want. So what if they didn't have the capital or knowhow to develop a nationwide wireless messaging network? How does this requirement protect "the little guy?" They won a patent for the technology and have a right to defend it.
After the few years of patent protection expire, the ideas expressed in the patent application become public domain. If the ideas weren't capitalized on during the protection period, then the patent holder has lost his/her opportunity. NTP tried to capitalize on the novelty of their ideas by sending out warning letters. All this while, the ideas expressed in their patent applications were readily available to the public. Even if RIM thought their technology was independently developed, it could be argued that the content of NTP's patents helped push the state of the art and indirectly aided RIM. People do peruse the Patent Office archives, read patent applications, and talk. What seems obvious today may not have been so yesterday. No one operates in a vacuum, not even RIM.
What seems clear in this case is that RIM thought they could completely sidestep the patent law, by out-marketing NTP and perhaps through a bit of fraud, and that their obstinate defiance of the legal system has hurt not only themselves but their customers and shareholders.
It really does make my blood boil when one company holds the other up for ransom.
...problem is, sometimes these lawsuits are for good reasons and protect serious investments and thousands of employees.
...just had to get the angst out of my system...
It almost seems like this particular lawsuit is really loopy - a company that doesn't produce, doesn't intend to produce, and has no-one employed but lawyer types - sues a company that's independently thought up the stuff and made it happen.
The human cost is what scares me. We need lawsuits sometimes, but why do we need lawsuits that are just a means of taking money away from a successful entity?
I felt so strongly about this that I wrote and recorded a tune called "Patent Trolls Got No Souls."
A Passionate Independent Musician
RTFA and all other RIM-related articles first.
Ever heard about a little company called "Eatoni Ergonomics" ?
Google it up now.
Rim is just a typical schood yard bully, they deserve their punishment...
Despite the description ("bullshit on paper"), this statement is simply 100% false. I urge you to research the concept of "constructive reduction to practice." I'll personally pay you $1,000,000 if you can find any proof whatsoever that "you have to have a working prototype" to win a patent in the US in 2006. This statement is pure fantasy.
NTP has nothing. They are just a bunch of lawyers who got an invalid patent on an idea and then waited to sue anybody who later inverted it.
This is completely false. The patents in question were secured by an inventor who went so far as making and attempting to market his invention. As I understand, he has since died and at some point assigned his patent rights to NTP, or they bought the patents outright. Regardless, the parent is simply pure fantasy.
>Isn't the judge sort of presuming that RIM's founder was looking through >USPTO's listings, found NTP's patents, and decided to implement them? Aren't >NTP's patents aged out already anyways?
Do you want "mind reading" laws in this country ?
Once a patent application is published, anybody can read it at www.uspto.gov,
and people do it all the time, anonimously, through some proxy servers, to hide their real identity.. read it and implement it immediately...
Ugly shit, as can I tell from my own experience with my own patents...
And for your information, US patents are valid for 20 years from filing date or 17 years from issue date, whichever comes later...
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This is just so F8ing stupid. I was in Dallas in 1985 and I dumped printouts in Alaska from Sun Oil's office (I had the routing codes wrong). This was on the IBM mainframe system.
Over 5 years before Lynes United Services in Calgary (who I worked for at the time) sent wireless messages. We didn't call it an "email" at the time but we did send messages. The company was working on oil field monitoring.
We had systems working back then.
In addition I personally used the Fidonet system here in Calgary and it had wireless packet radio and we did send messages back and forth - that was the 1985 time frame.
How much F8ing prior art do we need?
The PHONE COMPANY commonly ran wireless communcations on their ATM system because they have had wireless links in place for DECADES
------------
All this illustrates is that lawyers and juries and Judges do not make good engineers. What we have here is totally f8ing obvious!
Huge amounts of the telecomunications industry were doing wireless transmissions in many different ways. That email caught on and ran on existing technologies does not make it innovative in any way.
Arrgghhhh!
I live and work here in Waterloo, which is home to RIM. I know the mentality of the academics from the university, which is where RIM and other (not as major) tech companies have sprung from in the area.
The academics here keep talking about one example with fondness: the case of Qualcomm, where some smart PhDs developed some wonderful intellectual property (in their case cell phone communication protocols) and patented it. From then on they basically do no work, and collect royalties from anyone who uses the CDMA technology. This is what they hope to achieve, to strike it rich in tech.
This is what Waterloo people seem to aspire to: striking it rich with some intellectual property patent, then milking the world for royalties. It wouldn't surprise you to learn that this is also one of the most popular places in North America that Microsoft recruits from. This place is young; the university is very new, the industries around it are new. And there is a mentality here, where academics expect to get rich easily by riding the patent wave.
RIM tried to do the same thing. They are basically a one trick pony, and besides the blackberry they have nothing going for them.
That's it, khendron, you've used up your pun points for the quarter.
Advice: on VPS providers
Comparing RIM to SCO just doesn't fly. SCO is basically using some nearly-worthless old patents to try to extort money from those who put in the actual hard work. Remind you of someone? Consider NTP's (admitted) business strategy. They sat on some nearly-worthless patents for years with no intention of developing them, instead lying in wait for someone (like RIM) to do the hard work of transforming an airy concept into a commercially successful reality. Companies like NTP are parasites in the truest sense of the term. RIM should be hailed for having the spine to stand up to those leeches, instead of cravenly giving in to a settlement.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
I have a few ideas for simple solution to prevent anything like this ever happening again. Idea no. 1 works like this. If anybody sits on a patent, without actually working it; and somebody subsequently re-invents the same thing, and can demonstrate to the satisfaction of a court that they did so absolutely independently and without looking at the original patent documents, then the patent should be awarded to the re-inventor. Idea no. 2 is as follows: we go back to the old rule from the old days; no prototype, no patent. {What is a patent application without a prototype but a work of science fiction?} Idea no. 3: introduce a general presumption against the granting of patents; that is, every idea is assumed to be neither novel nor inventive, a bounty should be offered to anyone who can produce evidence of Prior Art which would nullify a patent application, and in the event of any dispute the courts would have the power to annul a patent, passing it into the Public Domain, and award token damages {of as little as 1 cent} for infringement. Idea no. 4 is similar to no. 1, but instead of awarding the patent to the reinventor, it would simply be annulled and the invention would pass into the Public Domain.
.....
Seriously, the original idea of patents was to enable a hardworking amateur inventor -- who may well have invested their life savings in their invention -- to enter the marketplace on a level footing with those already able to pass an invention off as their own, by providing an official document saying "This is exactly how it works, no bits left out, and by the way I invented it"; which would be valid for long enough for the inventor to recoup their costs and make a little profit, subject to the success of the invention of course, before it being given to the whole of humankind for the benefit of everyone. This serves to balance the individual's goal of short-term gratification with the larger goal of society at large, which is for everyone to benefit in the long term from the endeavours of everyone else. It was never the original intent that patents should be used as a trip-wire, effectively to stifle innovation by pre-empting the work of others.
Just think what would have happened if Cave-man had tried to patent fire, or stone axes, or taming wolves to help with hunting
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
That's what I "saw" as I glanced over the title, and basically just about lost it.
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
The Indian Patent Law had a provision saying that if you owned a patent X, and did not have a product in the Indian market that used X for Y number of years, other companies were free to use X to produce a product (after paying you a nominal royalty). This would get rid of patent trolls.
Of course, under pressure from the US, we are in the process of eliminating such provisions.
I have to agree with some of the ideas annunciated before me here about ways to fix the patent system. But I would go one step further. I suggest that a patent infringement case should not be able to be brought if the holder of a patent does not have a product implementing the patent in the market. The main reason for patents is to allow inventors to recoup their investment so that they can make a profit on a product implementing the invention. It was never intended to protect ideas. Ideas were supposed to be in the public domain. Only implementations were supposed to be patentable. This is a clear case where judges have exercised judicial activism and Congress has abdicated its responsibility by not checking that activism that Republicans talk so much about. Perhaps if their Blackberries are turned off, they'll start taking their responsibilities seriously and fix the patent system.
My understanding is that in Japan the patent law basically says use it or lose it. If you do not pursue either putting the patent into use yourself or actively pursue licensing the patent to others for others to actually use, then the patent is not valid. Period. So, if somebody sits on a patent for a couple of years and hasn't made efforts reasonably calculated to get others to use it, it isn't valid any longer. I can see this could lead to some pretty snarky litigation for the little guy who wants to use something himself who can't raise the money right away, but there is the kernel of an idea here that has a lot of appeal. I don't know how to make it fair to the little guy though.
Of course, the entire rest of the planet beyond the US gives the patent to the first to file and not necessarily to the innovator (though if the innovator intervenes at some appropriate stage, there is no patent at all).
Granted the US market is very important, but RIM will have the global arena. the US just screws itself from not having Blackberrys.
Seems to be typical when it comes to things that have to do with cellular networks.. hugely popular in the USA, they just have to use a system different from what the rest of the world uses (ok, they are catching up now). Past experience of course tells us that that just results in a more expensive system that easily gets outdated and becomes a bother when travelling cross-border, but who cares.
One thing that no one seems to get. If the NTP patents are all ultimately invalidated, this will open a veritable Pandora's box. NTP's patents, by all accounts, follow the form and letter of the law. If they are invalidated, then this will open the door for thousands and thousands of other patents to fall under review for the economic benifit of technology robber barons. Mark my words - only economic chaos can come of this!
"Canada's Research In Motion Ltd. was suing U.S. rival Glenayre Electronics Inc. to enforce a newly acquired patent on its BlackBerry wireless device.
"BlackBerry knockoffs will now need a licence from us," RIM co-chief executive officer James Balsillie warned. "The amateurs out there have to stop.""
And now RIM is getting sued for pattent infringement...it looks to me as if RIM and Mr. Lazaridis are getting their just desserts!!
Suppose I have a patent on a better mousetrap, but in order to
manufacture this I have to use many other patents on a basic mousetrap.
If I don't have enough resources to license those other earlier patents, I can just wait until they expire and then build my better mousetrap without taking a license from them.
This is a perfectly legitimate bussiness plan - to wait for say 10-15 years until some basic patents expire - that's what generic grug producers do.
Why do you think you should be stripped of your patent if, for example, your bussiness plan is about waiting for expiration of other patents ?
Stupid reasoning on your part...
Patent term is 20 years. Period.
Does anybody know if it does the "unknown" techniques as well? I mean seriously. Where does this thing (which we don't know if it is hardware or software) stand next to a creative individual or a script kiddie with new tricks up his sleave?
hate blackberry. never could get it to work right and the quality of the phone was horrible.
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