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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."
Never underestimate the stupidity of bean-counters, even more so that they run most companies nowadays.
...are the legal rep's screwing both sides for all they can
Cheap UK and US VPS
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'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'?
Well, given that their IP might not actually be their IP I think you're being premature. It remains to be seen just who really owns it. The real screwup in this whole saga is the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which apparently granted invalid patents in the first place.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
Except the idea behind patents is to protect innovation. I'm sure you've thought of a good number of things that would be great if patented, researched and marketed. The problem here is the researching and marketing. NTP has no product.
The blackberry is running on top of 18 million lines of code. How much code did NTP write? The blackberry is a physical piece of hardware I can hold. What can I buy from NTP with the same functionality?
NTP put in exactly zero work in their patent. Someone had a good idea, patented it, and then sat on it, waiting for someone else to actually MAKE IT WORK. That is not, or at least should not, be the foundation of the patent system. At this point there's plenty of options...save the patent so it can be researched while protected, I'd tentativly agree with that, maybe a 4 year limit and at least show some progress. (In NTP's case, they could've had a 15 year limit and not make product). Only issue a patent when there's a tangible device to go along with it, that's ideal.
I suppose, though, that they do have the patent, so they should get some recourse. I imagine that the best way would be to have RIM pick up NTP's R&D costs which amount to... the cost of filing a patent.
Seriously though, should I be able to file a patent for warp drive and just sit on it until someone actually does the grunt work and makes it...and then sue them back to the stone age? If you can answer yes to that without flinching...I fear for the fate of this nation.
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.
I'm not sure I'd agree that their "intellectual property" was violated. Unless there's something yet to come to light, NTP's patents (the only "intellectual property" in play here) were not part of the development process for RIM and weren't even known until *after* the development was substantially complete.
Yes, technically speaking, if NTP held valid patents and RIM infringed on them, then the "IP violated" claim does stand. Technically (legally, even, perhaps). But not *practically*, not in my mind at least. RIM stole nothing from NTP. RIM did not prevent NTP from pursuing business opportunities or developing products.
NTP chose to sit on their ideas. Do *nothing* with them. Should they be allowed to protect ideas they have no intention of ever using? Does that "encourage progress" as is the original intent of the patent system?
The patent system is being abused in ways that were never intended. If NTP was actively pursuing a product, or even actively pursuing a partner with which to produce a product, I'd have a different view - in that case RIM would be hurting NTP, NTP would be discouraged from entering the marketplace, and "progress" would be stifled. The patent system was designed to prevent that.
In this case, though, NTP had no intention of developing anything. NTP was waiting for someone *else* to invest *their* millions of dollars and then NTP would step in and capitalize. *That* stifles progress, in my opinion - no-one is encouraged to develop NTP's ideas for fear of being sued, NTP is unwilling to pursue them, and suddenly an idea is *completely* *lost* (in terms of becoming a viable product).
If this is upheld and NTP wins I fear we'll see even more of this "sitting" behavior and that will ultimately have a very negative effect on competition in the marketplace.
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
This kind of thing has been going on for a century or more ... large corporations maintaining huge patent portfolios that they cross-license with other huge companies so that they can a. avoid needless squabbling amonst themselves and b. squeeze individual inventors and smaller companies that don't have similar patent leverage. All that's happening now is that the practice is becoming popular outside the corporate sphere by organizations whose sole raison d'etre is to collect "intellectual property" and litigate for royalties and/or damages. Truly, this is a perversion of the patent system, and it is entirely due to Congress monkeying with said system over the years. The removal of the demonstrable prototype requirement was a big mistake, I think. It was really hard to say you had a patentable idea when you couldn't actually demonstrate it. Nowadays, patents are just pieces of paper with "concepts" spewed from the brain of some erstwhile "inventor", massaged by a patent lawyer (pardon me, "intellectual property attorney") into something the Patent Office can be persuaded to accept, which are then used to bludgeon people and organizations that have actually accomplished something.
You know, if we can't have a properly functioning patent system in the U.S. we'd really be better off with none at all. I mean, we're at the point now where the cost of acquiring and maintaining a patent is prohibitive for smaller inventors, and while some people believe that "innovation" only comes from big companies, they're simply wrong. A hell of a lot of cool stuff comes out of garages, basements and kitchen tables, and those people don't have much of a chance anymore. The system is so skewed towards corporate ownership of "intellectual property" that it is becoming harder and harder for anyone but a big corp to gain any traction.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Ironic, isn't it, that the patent system is becoming increasingly burdensome for exactly the people the system was originally intended to protect (the "small guy"). The cost of acquiring a patent is on the order thousands of dollars ($5,000 - $10,000, depending on your lawyer), which you have to be willing to spend without knowing if the patent which you receive actually has any value. It may be invalidated later (being granted is *not* a good measure of whether or not prior art exists) or simply not be useful.
More damagingly, though, a patent is useless if it can't be defended and defending one's patents is becoming horrifically expensive to the point that the winner is most likely to be the "big guy", and the "small guy" loses out.
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
Don't be an idiot, you cannot have a valid patent on just an idea. Otherwise people would be patenting things like antigravity and faster than light travel. You have to have a working prototype not just a bunch of bullshit on paper.
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. RIM actually invented the device and put a lot of hard work into getting something viable to market. They shouldn't have to pay a cent to these scum sucking lawyers.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
At some point, the right of industry--that is, the willingness of someone to take an idea and bring it to fruition, must be respected. Consider this: for any sufficiently complex technological device, literally thousands of technological ideas are involved in creating it and making it work. The cost of researching each and every one of these ideas and innovations to make sure that you aren't stepping on anyone else's toes would be prohibitive for a new company. This burden will continue to grow as new products become more complex; eventually, only companies with large war chests, like IBM and Microsoft, will be able to attempt anything. If this is the requirement placed upon innovation, then all innovation will soon cease, and we will end up with a collection of companies that produce nothing, but who squat on innovation and wait for someone with the guts to actually go out and do it. Then they swoop in with lawyers, kill the company, and feed on the corpse.
RIM made the thing, NTP didn't. RIM assumed the risks, the marketing and production costs, built the infrastructure, and filled in all the other gaps that were required to make the product a reality. RIM did indulge in lawsuits against patent violators, but these were for patents employed in an existing product, to defend a market that they had created, and investments which NTP made no contribution to. RIM did 99.9% of the work. If NTP gets anything, it should be a small interest in RIM, not a crippling sum which will devastate RIM and warn all future innovators that really, the effort to actually make something just isn't worth the trouble.
And if we live in fear of litigation to the point that we simply won't bother to produce anything, rest assured that the Asian tigers will suffer no such qualms. They will build it, they will sell it in markets which care nothing about our patents, while we slowly sink into irrelevance, and when they do come here, they will have the war chests required to defend their products. When that day comes, all our carefully guarded patents will be outdated and worthless, and we will find ourselves in the position of a third world country wishing that we could make all the cool stuff that they do.
Is it short memory day around here? Before the NTP/RIM case, RIM was busy suing Handspring. As the grandparent said, they started as a bunch of litigating bastards. They tried to do pretty much the same thing to Handspring that NTP is now doing to them - crush them with patent litigation. Last time around it was about having a QWERTY keyboard on a portable. Now it's about push email.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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I think it's worse than that. US patents are only supposed to be granted for inventions which are not obvious. The US patent office doesn't seem to make the slightest attempt to police this rule. The NTP patent, and most of the other controversial patents one hears about seem, to me, to fail this test.
Maybe I am missing something, or maybe I didn't read close enough. But I am pretty sure RIM started with the lawsuits long before this NTP nonsense came up. Going after portable devices for "Hey! you stole our idea of making a small keyboard!" I'm not saying that their only business is lawsuits as is the case with NTP. I just think there is some karma involved here in the tendancy to use stupid and obvious patents to compete rather than coming up with something truely innovative. I don't even really have a problem with patents on a whole, just the insanity that has come as of late with patents that are not terribly unique and special ideas.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
RIM made the thing, NTP didn't. RIM assumed the risks, the marketing and production costs, built the infrastructure, and filled in all the other gaps that were required to make the product a reality.
No disagreement there. But RIM should have performed due diligence in researching applicable patents before launching the BlackBerry. RIM should have responded in a reasonable way in a reasonable timeframe when NTP notified it of the possible infringement.
This bit deserves to be in bold: RIM shouldn't have lied to the court and said it HAD responded to NTP's notification when it hadn't.
This bit deserves to be in mile-high flaming letters: RIM shouldn't have attempted to deceive the judge and jury with a faked demonstration in the courtroom.
Seriously, that's f**king retarded.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I agree that RIM is infringing by using the technology in NTP's patents (assuming the patents are upheld) and that whether or not the patents were used by RIM during development is irrelevant. I also agree that RIM has consistently acted in bad faith.
My original point is that I don't believe that NTP should be allowed to *hold* the patents if they do not intend to exercise them. That's a comment about how I wish the law were written, not a comment about how the law *is* written.
And I don't believe they should be allowed to hold them because, in part, I disagree with your first statement: Publishing the patent does *not* "encourage progress". Publishing the patent merely tells others what they may *not* build (without licensing from the patent holder, which discourages the builder) and what they may *not* patent themselves (which includes not only the patented idea, but any ideas that could be considered "trivial derivatives").
Therefore, publishing the patent discourages development by others along the lines of the patent. If the patent holder chooses not to turn the patent into an actual implementation, then that line of ideas is permanently held "hostage" by the patent holder. This does the *opposite* of "encouraging progress", in my opinion.
The way that the patent in *intended* to "encourage progress" is by protecting an inventor with limited resources while he pursues the implementation of his invention. The idea is that if I have an idea, you shouldn't be allowed to steal it just because you have more money and can produce an implementation sooner. The patent system is *not* intended to allow me to prevent an idea from *ever* coming to fruition simply because I choose not to implement it.
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
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.
Geez I was just poking at a bigoted flame artist. However numbers alone don't guarantee anything. In the war of 1812 Americans outnumbered Canadians more than 10 to 1, with a boast from Henry Clay that "I trust I shall not be presumptuous when I state that I verily believe that the militia of Kentucky alone are competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet.". This was obviously and completely untrue.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
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.
Ummmmm no, the moral is: "Don't get caught".
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
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!
You mean like MS did MANY times...each time getting caught? And they only received a slap on the wrist...seems to me, the courts have established that being dishonest in the court room is the preferred means of representing you're self.
If these guys are to be slapped with billions, then MS should be slapped for trillions!