Slashdot Mirror
RIM Wins BlackBerry Patent Dispute in UK
Guinnessy writes "Research In Motion has won its first patent case against Inpro Licensing. Justice Nicholas Pumfrey rejected a claim by Luxembourg-based Inpro Licensing SARL that it holds a UK patent on the technology used by RIM to transpose images and Internet files onto BlackBerry screens ruling that all the claims at issue were either obvious or lacking in novelty. It is the second European legal victory this year for RIM, following a Munich court's invalidation of a German version of the same patent. The big court case of course is on Feb 24 when a U.S. court will consider whether the BlackBerry service should be halted for infringing patents held by licensing firm NTP."
This is a great thing!
...10 years down the line. In 1996, the use of a proxy server to change data to suit the target device would have been very innovative.
Looks like they aren't going to go out of business after all. Maybe I'll send them an application, I always wanted a RIM job. I just hope they aren't anal about the dress code.
From TFA:
And here I was — silly me — thinking that this sort of thing consituted a "method" and was therefore unpatentable in the UK! From the UKPO's web-site, the following are excuded:
Don't 5, and possible 4, call this whole game into question?
Why are companies allowed to sit on patents and wait for someone to come allong and violate it? Why aren't they forced to A) license it or B) to implement it? (If they choose neither then the patent should expire.)
I was sure there was a semi-recent interview by Slashdot with someone that worked at the USPTO, but I can't seem to find it.
But really, can anyone fathom what actually goes on inside the USPTO? One assumes there must be people there who are fighting the incompetence and denying patents, only to be disciplined or fired, but I can't think of any examples of that. I just don't see how the USPTO could a) keep qualified people out or b) keep the qualified people inside from denying patents without using some kind of retribution.
If I worked there, you can be damn sure that I'd deny 90% of the tech-related patents that came across my desk, fully justifying each decision, and wholly expecting to be disciplined or fired for not being a rubber-stamp. Then I'd sure as hell make a big stink about it. Why isn't this happening?
Don't Hate, Gestate
Though interesting news occurance, it's unrelated to the NTP Vs. RIM. The NTP Vs. RIM case is only a US distribution of a contested technology. But on the other hand, thinking about international patent rights, it's interesting that a Canadian firm would seek to overwhelm a small US patent holder by legal wrangling and political maneuvering.
Make it so that a company without any R&D division cannot file or own patents. A company that doesn't have employees paid to create new things shouldn't be allowed to own patents since it has not created anything, and thus doesn't need any incentives to create.
Patents are an evil and savor in their own The protect companies who spend millions in research from another company coming along and just basically stealing all the work put into a project. On the other hand they are the cause of our large drug prices and crazy licensing agreements (at times). Some technology should just not be patented but where that line is would be nearly impossible to draw. There should be something to stop companies from patenting products they don't even on building or a way for patents to be turned over once they realize the patient is crazy. (There most likely is a process for this but it doesn't seam to work very well) The bottom line is someone will always try to get around them or use them to their advantage... its just the human way
Good job, RIM!
Although I don't generally like sueing which got us in the case in the first place RIM should go after InPro with all their resources and crush them like a bug. Someone needs to put these patent companies in their place and set some precedence. This has cost not only RIM, but lots of other people money and time. If I was the government I'd go after InPro as well, think of all the tax dollars they have wasted.
But we all know the big fight is in the USA.
Why? The FP seems to take that stance as well, but I consider it really not very true.
Although the US may count as the biggest market for RIM, they have plenty of other markets now that have invalidated the offending patents. And most importantly, as a Canadian company, The US has no power to force RIM out of business (just out of the US).
If US courts thoroughly spank RIM, it will hurt them, a lot. But not quite the death-blow many people seem to consider it. The world doesn't end at the US border.
I'd be willing to guarantee though that a large subsection of Blackberry users are here and if things go badly and RIM is forced out of the US, there will be serious business repercussions. True, perhaps not a fatal blow, but bound to hurt in the long run, at least until they can get 1% of the Chinese population to buy one.
Of course business leaders in the US won't let it happen; so much of their communications network is tied into the Blackberry that they couldn't afford to suddenly have to give it up.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Never Transgress Patents Vs. Really Irritating Misunderstanding
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Hopefully RIM will learn their lesson with these things and maybe quit going after other people for stupid patents. In the latest issues I do side with RIM, but at the same time, they are getting what they deserve. RIM is hardly innocent here, they did this same crap with their stupid mini keyboard on the blackberry vs makers of PDAs with mini keyboards. Sharp Zaurus was doing the mini keyboard thing about 4 years before RIM put the first Blackberry on the market, so to me this is mostly karma coming back to RIM for their nonsense prior.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
If the USA locks down RIM with patent disputes, you can KISS it GOODBYE.
Isn't the US in some sort of WIPO-type agreement with Canada to honor each other's patents... or something?
Part of the new-world-order-global-conspiracy-coverup-controll ed-by-aliens thing I thought.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
RIM has hardly been above reproach in court or in its prior dealings with NTP, which after all does hold what are valid patents - at least the patents haven't yet been invalidated in a final declaration by the US Patent Office. And NTP is the company of the now-deceased inventor as opposed to a cabal of speculators who buy up patents wholesale and wait like vultures for a chance to strike.
But the primary reason for my position is the hope that NTP will succeed in obtaining the injunction to shut down RIM's operation in the US. Only then will the discomfiture of millions of Blackberry owners raise a big enough stink to force Congress into a reevaluation of the wisdom of allowing software patents at all.
Patents are country-specific. There are international agreements in place to help inventors get equivalent patents in multiple countries, but that is not at all the same as countries honouring other countries' patents.
The problem with finding prior art is that you need to find one piece of prior art that covers all the aspects of a claim. You can't mosaic them. The prior art we used in trial was the following:
The general concept was clearly obvious back then. But the patent had some specific details that Inpro claimed were not obvious. I believe they were obvious to someone in the field in 1996. Clearly the judge agreed.
I'll have offended tossers, went out was in the tea I We need to Address first avoid going
This is what happens when you post after sniffing glue...
For the record, here's the patent in question.
The problem is that there's a grey area in the law as what constitutes a computer program and what constitutes a piece of hardware that includes some software. The latter is patentable, the former isn't.
In this case the patent claims to be on the proxy server itself (ie the box), but if you read it closely there's nothing special about the box - the patent is really about the software. But this is a grey area, and there isn't enough legal precidence to rule this sort of patent out quickly on these grounds. In the end we shot it down on prior art (see my other post for details), and obviousness over the prior art.
- Fzz
Judge Pumfrey is the same guy who ruled that Storage Computer didn't have a valid patent on parity-based RAID such as RAID 3 and RAID 5. I read the transcripts of that case -- he is very skeptical of patents which are obvious implementations of existing ideas. If you can give an average engineer the same problem and he comes up with the same solution, then there shouldn't be a patent.