Slashdot Mirror
Last NTP Patent Tentatively Thrown Out
pcause writes "Reuters reports that the fifth NTP patent has been rejected. What does it say about the US Patent office and software patents that these patents have made it through trials, appeals, etc and only now has the Patent Office decided they weren't any good in the first place?" From the article: "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has sided with BlackBerry portable e-mail device maker Research in Motion Ltd. by issuing a non-final rejection of a fifth patent at the center of its legal battle with patent holding company NTP Inc. The decision means the patent agency has now issued non-final rejections of all five patents at issue in a BlackBerry patent-infringement case before a federal judge."
They all have a crackberry.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It means that those government employees, all the way up to the Congress, who were worried about their Blackberry service made some calls to some people in the Patent Office.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
I was just getting ready to photoshop a picture of Heston with a blackberry: "Not from my cold dead hands". Guess I don't need to now.
This is just one step in a grand conspiracy by those sneaky canucks to take over the word.
I for one welcome our touque wearing overlords.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
It means that 20 Senators, 100 Congressmen, and 1000 federal judges, along with Tommy Lee Jones in a US Marshall's uniform, called upon the USPTO and told them that they could either find a way to invalidate the patents or they could all find themselves drafted under secret provisions of various secret laws and assigned as the US Navy's designated patent examiners at the secret underground Antarctic base for the rest of their lives, with no vacation time or days off. And no funeral; their bodies would just be tossed out for leapord seals to eat sometime around 2030.
And believe me, that was probably the only true BIPARTISAN delegation Washington DC has seen in 13 years.
sPh