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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."
Well, it does seem to make them upset: "I don't like seeing NTP referred to as a patent troll company," says Tom Campana III, Mr. Campana's son. "I take it personally." Of course, a big payout will make them feel better. I hope they don't get it.
I don't think that RIM has acted in anything but self-interest, but the Campanas are being ridiculous. RIM came up with a product that actually works, while NTP has nothing to offer except a bunch of old patents. They aren't actively developing them; they're sitting on them until someone else comes up with something similar, and then they sue. They have no redeeming value. It's too bad.
In my opinion, if you're not going to use something that you've patented, then you should have no right to stop someone else from developing it, especially if the other party seems to have come up with the idea independently. The idea behind patents is to let the inventor develop their product without competition for a limited amount of time. If the inventor isn't developing it, it's not in anyone's interest to let them stop others from doing so.
"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."