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."

Comments

Patent stupidity?

[matt4077]

no pun inteded, I guess.

Re:Patent stupidity?

[LiquidCoooled]

Alternative title: Rim - The hole story
Starring goatse?

Nahhhh no puns

Stupidity...

[Pig Hogger]

Never underestimate the stupidity of bean-counters, even more so that they run most companies nowadays.

Re:Stupidity...

[geoff lane]

You left the "i" out of "ruin".

Re:Stupidity...

[bird]

Indeed. But if you read the article, you would learn that it wasn't the beaners that fucked this one up-- it was the founder of RIM, a technical guy.

Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[Rick and Roll]

This is a great example of the kind of problems our patent system causes. I hope that this gets more and more press. I'm tired of being alone when it comes to my outrage at software patents.

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[Nato_Uno]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[holt]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[Nato_Uno]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[Thangodin]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[ScrewMaster]

Yes. There have been a number of adjustments to the patent system that work out very well in favor of the big guy. Charging maintenance fees, for example ... a small inventor strapped for cash may not be able to afford the fees and then finds his patent becoming public domain before he has a chance to do anything with it. Not having to show a working prototype was another brilliant idea.

I have a couple of patents that I received as a consultant to a large corporation: they wanted me to assign all rights to them but I refused. I told their lawyer that if they didn't want to share ownership of the patent they should have made it clear up front that such was the case, particularly seeing that it was my work that was being patented. Supposedly I should have signed away all rights before the project started, but no-one ever mentioned that to me. So they dropped the issue at that point: at least I don't have to worry about paying the maintenance fees. Hey, maybe I should go talk to NTP and see if they can get some money out of anybody that might be infringing. Probably not: it was a very well-written and concise patent and the technology is pretty old. You never know, though.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[pnewhook]

If you want to do business in America you will not violate our laws and you will pay damages that you owe great pioneering Americans.

Sure. As soon as you payback the 5 Billion you owe us for illegal duties on softwood lumber in violation of NAFTA.

Go cry to your Queen, as if she or anyone else can help.

Careful not to piss us of fucktard or we'll invade again and burn down the Whitehouse (again).

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[pnewhook]

Wow its worse than I thought. I think you are a republican. Obviously also suffering from short man syndrome and penis envy.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[Simon Garlick]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[Nato_Uno]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[pnewhook]

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.

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[MKalus]

The moral of this story is simple: don't lie in court.

Ummmmm no, the moral is: "Don't get caught".

Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court

[GooberToo]

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!

Which side am I supposed to be on?

[db32]

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.

Fairy-tale of egos, legal blunders, and patent...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "Snow White, 6 Lawyers, and The One-Click Dwarf?"

I loved that one as a kid.

The only winners...

[rf0]

...are the legal rep's screwing both sides for all they can

Re:The only winners...

[DRJlaw]

And still Mr. Lazaridis and RIM didn't settle. Friends and colleagues say Mr. Lazaridis is uncompromising by nature. "Mike is the kind of guy who doesn't make business compromises. You know how people plead guilty, even when they know they're innocent, just to get a reduced sentence -- Mike wouldn't do that," says Bill Frezza, who worked with RIM on prototype wireless devices in the early 1990s while he worked at Ericsson Canada Ltd. Yes, it's the lawyers' fault. The businessmen that 1. want to receive a royalty for their patented IP and 2. don't want to pay anything for others' patented IP are the victims. If only there weren't lawyers, these businessmen would... fight it out in court anyway (recall, RIM sought patents and threatened others in the industry with patent infringement suits as well). Almost nobody likes other people's lawyers, but a relatively high percentage of of people like their own lawyers. Perhaps you need to look deeper at who is at fault in each individual situation.

The Key thing

[nattt]

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.

Fun with crackberryheads...

[IAAP]

...I just don't really like crackberries.

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!

wireless Email, I'm so confused!

[SQLz]

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'?

Re:wireless Email, I'm so confused!

[codegen]

While you are partially right in that the two are an obvious combination, there is a bit
more to RIM than simply using pop over wireless. The cost of constant connections
to check you mail would drain the battery in short order. It closer to what happens
in SMS. When the server receives new email for you, it actively sends out a message
through the wireless network to your device which is most likely in standby mode
(like a cellular phone). That makes your device notify you that you have email. It
is not a TCP/IP connection.

I'm glossing over many of the details. I went to a RIM presentation at a conference 1.5
years ago, and the details are a bit fuzzy. I don't agree with software patents in the
first place, so a pox on both houses. But there is a bit more happening than tcp over
general wireless network.

Re:wireless Email, I'm so confused!

[codegen]

Not really, xbiff is just a process that does periodic checker and changes
its icon. That is exactly what they don't do. The server sends out a message
through the network to a device that is on standby, just like a cell system
sends out a message to a phone that is on standby. The innovation is in
the details of the network handling, which is not a simple TCP/IP connection
over wireless.

The obvious part here

[Z00L00K]

seems to me that RIM failed to check for prior art. In any case - If they hadn't put up claiming a patent and at the same time going harsh on possible competition - would NTP have been hard on claiming their patent then?

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?

Re:The obvious part here

[DRJlaw]

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?

The majority of patents are not worth the cost of preparing and filing the application. The minority of patents are worth modest fortunes, and sometimes more. The problem is determining the difference between the former and the latter. It's educated guesswork.

Patent applications do not necessarily become prior art. Before November of 2000, U.S. patent applications were not published as a matter of course. The content of a patent application only became public if a later patent or a printed publication made the public aware of the abandoned application's existence. If the document is not accessible to the interested public, it is not prior art. Even after November of 2000, a U.S. patent application can be withheld from publication if the inventor certifies that they have not and will not file an application in any patent office that has an 18 month publication rule (the current standard).

That being said, if you want to prevent others from patenting your idea, whether or not you intend to patent it, all you have to do is publish the idea in a way that's accessible to the public. This is phenomenally easy to do when you consider the existence of Google and the internet. Make sure that the document can be indexed by search engines, and include a precise publication date (not "2004"), and you've overcome most of the barriers that would prevent an examiner or attorney from using your publication as prior art against an application or patent.

Of course, if you intend to patent an invention described in that document, especially in countries outside the U.S., you would be well advised to publish your idea only after you've filed the application(s)...

Re:RIM Has Itself to Blame

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

conclusion

[oliderid]

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.

Re:conclusion

[twiddlingbits]

The problem is NOT the patent concept it is the application of the concept by the inept Patent Office. They do half-assed reviews and grant bad patents because 1) they don't have the skills needed to make the "prior art" determination and 2) they are underfunded and under political pressure to grant patents quickly both of which lead to patent battles such as this one. I think a good patent attorney could patent breathing the way things work now.

Re:conclusion

[BobTheLawyer]

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.

Re:confused

[despisethesun]

*giant cane appears and pulls flok off the stage*

This behavior is pretty common

[confusion]

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/

IBM's Devices in 80's

[raftpeople]

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).

Re:IBM's Devices in 80's

[Chanc_Gorkon]

And it was from....RIM. I have been in what used to be a mainframe shop since the mid 90's and the techs carried the early blackberries. I saw the RIM logo on the back of these. They switched from the brick like ones to the more PDA like ones a while back.

job loss

[DirtyJ]

After reading that blow by blow summary, I worry that many Research in Motion employees will have to say goodbye to their RIM jobs.

Shoot 'em both

[sjames]

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.

Re:Shoot 'em both

[aliscool]

Microsoft will end up the winner. Outlook mobile access on Windows mobile version 5. We just got a quote from our vendor to replace our 156 Blackberries with IPAQ's using OMA. We'll only exercise this option if forced to. But MS would be the clear winner.

Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Long article...

[Professor_UNIX]

I got about 20% of the way through and lost interest in this even though I've seriously been wondering what this whole Blackberry lawsuit is about. How can someone have a patent on something like "wireless e-mail"? Tons of phones can read e-mail and even my Motorola pager can send and receive e-mail. If NTP sat on this submarine patent just waiting for people to start using their technology without sending out cease and desist orders then their patent should be invalidated.

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.

Re:Fairy-tale of egos, legal blunders, and patent.

[mrchaotica]

Shhh! Be careful, or Disney'll get you for copyright infringment!!!11

Doesn't look good for Research in Motion,

[ScrewMaster]

but you know what they say: "Fill it to the RIM ... with Grim!"

Re:RIM Has Itself to Blame

[pnewhook]

Bullshit. Patents are granted for non-obvious ideas. Implementation has nothing to do with the patent system. That's only a crutch for those who think the system doesn't apply to them.

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.

Re:Stop looking for bad guys

[TheRaven64]

How does that make them "litigating bastards"?

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.

Re:RIM Has Itself to Blame

[waldo2020]

hey RIMboi - read the friggin article. It says Campana designed and operated working message/pager system. Whether is was a huge commercial success is not an issue. The facts are that he did get a perfectly legal pattent on. The courts can only work with the facts and the law.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Stop looking for bad guys

[db32]

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.

Not stupidity, it's big egos!

[ECXStar]

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.

To quote Benjamin Franklin

[kadathseeker]

"A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."

fake demo?

[belmolis]

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?

Behind it all, Real Human Story

[layer3switch]

"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

Re:Behind it all, Real Human Story

[layer3switch]

"...in theory the two countries' patents kind of knock each other out, right?"
No. Simple as that. :) If you have rules under your household, and I am permitted to go into your home, isn't it logical to think that I should follow your rules and not my own habit of things in my own home?

"I had more than a couple of friends who had done the nascent version of it before 1991: hooking modems up to a couple of computers that monitored servers and paged them text msgs when things happened. So RIM (and NTP) centralized the modem part?"
No. Also simple as that since your friends didn't patent that idea nor put out detail publication as proof of work. Can you return an item without any proof of purchase to a store?

"Whom did Motorola work with with its RIM-like boxes in the late 90's, SkyTel? How come NTP isn't going after SkyTel as well?"
Yes, and No. SkyTel (according to my brief research) used its own proprietary patented paging network with Motorola devices. Different patent, Different Story.

"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?"
No. Judges aren't to "presume" anything. That would be prejudice. However court can find evidence of "who put his/her hand in the cookie jar first" by patent and implementation. If I put my name on "first come, first serve" reservation in an exclusive restaurant days in advance, and later found out that someone else is enjoying the spoils at my expense (a reserved table), I could just walk away or ask that person to share the table with me, and in return, a contribution toward the tip. To the host/hostess (or judge), the damage is already done, however both party (you and the other person sitting on the table big enough for both) can work out a reasonable deal to accommodate the needs. But the guy on table (RIM) says, "I'll just pretend you don't exist, and hope you'll just go away."

Do you;
1) walk away and hope that one day, you'll be lucky enough and get another table at the restaurant?
2) ask host/hostess to ask the guy at the table to share again with proof of reservation?
3) if #2 fails, complain to the owner of the restaurant so that you are accommodated and get the message across to that rude person on that table?

Personally I would just walk away, because it's just a meal and there is always other restaurant and other tables waiting for me, more deserving of my business. However life doesn't await for you to sit on at other table as easily as a restaurant. Mr. Campana didn't just sit on his patents. He lost his business to bigger company like SkyTel in a bidding with AT&T. Started up numerous attempt to make his invention accessable to the public since 1970's. Call it, ill fate or unlucky steak, but NTP isn't just patent troll as you may think. Mr. Campana was in business of wireless paging 2-way comm since '70s with his ESA/Telefind and filing patents for his work (including child tracking system). In 1984, Mr. Lazaridis wins 6G contract with GM to build wireless terminal update system and later creates DigiSync (barcode reader) for film industry and way later when tided relations with Rogers Cantel from Mobitex (offshoot from Ericsson), he finally in 1996/1998 rolled out first 2-way pager using Mobitex(CA) and Bell South(US) network, using similar technology as Mr. Capmana had patented.

Only Mr. Campana's fault here is that in US, he was that "little guy" with no real prospect, while Mr. Lazaridis lucked out with Mr. Balsillie (MBA, business strategist) and Mr. Cantel and his backing in Canada and later Bell South in US.

During the course of history, what if Mr. Campana stroke gold with AT&T's contract? Would have AT&T's wireless 2-way real-time paging system been successful as RIM? or if at all? How would they have played out? Or would Mr. Campana compete with Mr. Lazaridis? As some may say companie

So, let me get this straight.

[faedle]

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.

This particular lawsuit (and the :-) applic.)

[ursabear]

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.

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." ...just had to get the angst out of my system...

Invalid patents

[cdn-programmer]

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!

The RIM / Waterloo mentality

[bigberk]

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.

Re:The RIM / Waterloo mentality

[studog-slashdot]

Mod parent down as troll/flamebait. They failed to provide any credentials, here's mine:

I live in Kitchener. I graduated from U(W). I am employed in a small tech firm owned by a U(W) grad. None of the U(W) people I know, including several who work at RIM, have the attitude the parent poster claims we do.

...Stu

RIM as SCO?

[jheath314]

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.