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Inside the BlackBerry Workaround
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek has a pretty good FAQ-style article on the proposed workaround that RIM would implement if a judge upholds an injunction." From the article: "It would work by changing the part of the network where e-mails are stored. Right now, when someone is out of wireless coverage range and can't immediately get e-mail access, RIM's service stores incoming messages on computers at one of its two network operations centers, or NOCs. When you come back into coverage range, those e-mails are forwarded to you automatically.
"
Is RIM hoping to invent around and get off the hook by invoking the Rule of Equivalents with the PTO?
#include "forums.h"
int main() {while (bollox) postcount++;}
I'm kind of confused. Why would RIM not store the emails at the blackberry server to begin with? Surely that would have been less resource intensive on their part, and more comfortable to clients in regards to security.
Someone who knows more about this care to clue me in?
it's not hurting innovation. It's helping it. patents are what keep money flowing into new ideas. Otherwise, there's no reason to sink millions into anything; tyhere's no value to being the first rat to the mousetrap cause the second guys are gonna get the cheese and eat ur lunch.
the patent system is too lax, and the criteria for offering patents is flawed, but the system does not hurt innovation. Not at all.
un burrito me trampeó.
Right now, when someone is out of wireless coverage range and can't immediately get e-mail access, RIM's service stores incoming messages on computers at one of its two network operations centers, or NOCs. When you come back into coverage range, those e-mails are forwarded to you automatically.
Under the workaround, these waiting e-mails would be stored somewhere else -- on the servers that sit behind the firewall of a company or carrier network. A large part of the infringement of the NTP patents is based on the e-mails being stored at the NOC, analysts say.
They could have just renamed or recreated the NOC as something else like, 'HELL' - the Humongous Email Limbo Lockup.
This way, when NTP asks them how they did it, they can simply say 'Go to HELL.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Since when can you patent guaranteeing delivery of a message?
Well, RIM had sent the Patent Office a message complaining about the "obviousness" of the patent, but somehow they never received it...
And patent squatting, or whatever you care to call it when a company sits on a patent without utilizing it, simply to stifle competition, should be illegal.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
The reason: A jury found RIM guilty of infringing on NTP's licenses in 2002. RIM lost its bid to overturn that verdict. So, even if the Patent Office throws out NTP's patents, RIM still has to pay royalties for the time up until the patents are overturned.
Okay, if RIM is:
1: Having to pay royalties still on every unit sold.
2: Has a workaround to avoid the patent they are paying royalties on.
3: Says there's no difference to the end-user to use this workaround.
4: Says all new *ackBerries have the new code in them already.
Then why haven't they rolled out this workaround already ASAP. It would:
1: Make any court injunction moot.
2: Reduce the number of units that they owe royalties on.
Methinks there's more to this that's not being told yet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Maybe I'm completely missing the boat here, but I recall when I got my first cellphone capable of receiving text messages 10 years ago that those messages would be queued up on the carrier's servers until I turned my phone on or was in signal range. Would that not be prior art?
ConsultingFair.com
I agree with you. Some method of actively tracking patents to determine that there is measurable progress towards marketing of the patent. If the patent-holder isn't moving to market with the innovation, then the patent is conditionally voided. I say conditionally, because if after it being voided, the original patent-holder should be given preference should they re-patent the innovation. Instances like this can be for example... when startyups run out of cash and suspend development while trying to re up, etc.
I agree totally.
un burrito me trampeó.
You are 100% right.
A patent should only be valid if there is a product or service utilising it.
liqbase
This is SO obvious that a patent should never have been issued for it. What sort of level of "inventiveness" is required to envision this? Its an obvious consequence of developing ANY email service that, if the person isn't avaliable to receive it, you don't just send it to /dev/null.
the patent system is too lax, and the criteria for offering patents is flawed, but the system does not hurt innovation. Not at all.
The system is what is hurting innovation. It allows for companies like NTP to buy patents for the sole purpose of sueing people/companies that are actually innovating on the patent. My 2 cents is that patent law should require that any patents owned by individuals or corporation must be utilized for some product in the marketplace within an agreed upon timeframe. If it isn't, then it should go up for bid so that a person that wants to innovate using it can. If no one bids, it should just go into the public domain. Of course, there are lots of things that have to be worked out (timeframe, bid values, etc.), but you get the general idea.
There really is no competitor to the BlackBerry when it comes to a complete solution. I realize that its trendy to be dismissive, but if you haven't at least played around with one, don't knock it until you do. If there was a true OSS or even standards-based alternative, that would be one thing - but there isn't. And the Feds really shouldn't be spending tons of money to develop solutions rather than buying COTS packages that work.
I'd love to see someone come up with a true competitor to the Blackberry. Hasn't happened yet...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Our computer system (wimsey.com, earlier known as !vanbc) was the portal through which over 400 local and regional BBSs sent/received e-mail to the rest of the world, including Fido-net.
They dialed in periodically - and if mail for them arrived at our location we stored it until they connected. Seems pretty straight forward to me as prior art. This was mid 1980s and the technology was fairly old at that time.
The fact that these patents cover wireless merely means that the "physical" network element was wireless, not landlines - but the technical purpose and basic methods are likely identical.
On another note - in the mid '90s we had similar multi-jurisdictional (Vancouver, Kelowna, Beijing China, sites in USA) e-mail and dial-up cooperation where a central LDAP database identified which of the several regional servers any users' e-mail was on and no matter whether they dialed into their home system or one of the remotes, allowed them to retreive it directly. Similar to the work-around.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
How does what RIM is doing infringe on NTP's patent, but POP3 or IMAP does not? If you send me an e-mail and my laptop is "out of range", that is "off" or "not in range of a 802.11 gateway" it goes to my mail server and waits there until I log on. Then I retrieve the buffered messages and display them on my "wireless device".
I understand the backlash against squatters but making it illegal to squat? That sounds a bit hard to enforce IMO. What if I come up with an idea that has some ramifications in the energy industry. However it is a bit before its time. 5 years later a cold fusion techology is invented which requires my idea? So my idea is invalid? I know this is an extreme idea but I am using hyperbole for a reason. What standards could someone devise and enforce to invalidate patent squatters. I think that for the benefit of the entire system we have to accept this detestible practice. It also has benefits in that these patent houses that just buy up patents are also purchasing them from the original holder who couldn't enforce or come up with a use themselves. In that manner they help the system.
B O R I N G
What's an operator?
Can't RIM just leave their machines at the NOC and have them forward the email requests to the central server rather than storing the email? That should require no change in the user devices either, which would be the big pain for the consumers under any fix.
Problem is, now you have to define utilizing. What if I patent a part of a larger system, but the rest of the system isn't ready for market yet. Does designing a system that would use that patent constitute utilizing it?
Personally, I think a system like this would work better:
Allow for an easier to get, low cost, shorter term patent (think helping the little guy) - Say less than $200 (no lawyer needed) and 2 years
Require that a prototype demonstrating the patent (not necessarily the end item) be required in order to upgrade the above patent to a full protection patent
I don't see that the problem is that patents are too easy to get. I think they are too easy for the wrong people, and too hard for the right ones. I don't have the $10k+ required to file a patent for something I want to develop in my garage. But I also don't want to spend two years developing it, and then get nailed for patent infringement because a year ago somebody patented something similar.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
Some people have said that a patent holder should have to be actively developing a patent for it to be valid. I don't think this is the case. A patent protects the idea/plan/mechanism, and patenting your product and then never building the product is fine, you are more than welcome to make your income by licensing out use of your idea. The company should however have to actively protect the patent, like a trademark. If a company patents something and hides it in a drawer until a handfull of fortune 500 companies are using it, then whips it out for a lawsuit, the patent should be invalidated.
The real problem here is the granting of patents for obvious ideas, such as queuing an email that cannot yet be delivered.
Tech patents need to be fairly short-term, and need to have an incredibly difficult obviousness test to pass.
A room of experts on the subject should be fully and entirely briefed on the problem, and list obvious solutions. If any of the solutions they list coincide with the pending patent, then it must be declined.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Don't count on the messages being secure. I interviewed there once, and spoke with the guy who was handling the security. He impressed me as your typical wanna-be; familiar with the standard tools, but not familiar with attack techniques. You know, the typical slap-it-together-to-meet-the-buzzwords approach.
Anyone who thinks their messages here are secure is deluding themselves.
As far as the interview went, I shut that down fairly quickly. They had an absolutely rediculous NDA to sign. That's always a tip-off that working at the company will suck, when they try to screw you over when you first meet them. Clearly management didn't give a damn about the employees.
In another stunning example, the patent office is once again proven to be not the receptacle of revolutionary ideas or the catalyst of innovation, but rather the repository of ideas nobody is allowed to think any more. Or needs to.
I would tend to agree, especially based on our current patent climate, but here is my concern:
I, personally, have several ideas that I think are "patent-worthy". I cannot afford a patent let alone the costs of (pre-)production. So let's say I scrape together enough cash to make a patent ($400-$5000 depending on the route you go), now what do I do with it? My options are to produce the product (I have already established that this is out of question financially), wait for someone to infringe on my patent and sue them (expensive and risky, especially for an individual trying to feed a family), or sell my patent to someone else.
If I sell the patent to someone else, I have a couple of options. One, I can try to sell/license it to a company that is in business related to the patent. So for most of my ideas, I could try to sell it to IBM, MS, Sandisk, etc., but the chances of them buying the patent are pretty slim. The other option I have is to sell the patent to a company that holds patents, like Invention Submission Corporation or perhaps a company like NTP. So I have an agreement with them that they either pay me a lump sum (far less than the value they see in the patent), or a percentage of profits from the patent. So they take on the risk and the financial burden, and I as a small player am pretty happy with my payout (perhaps I have enough now for one of my other ideas, to patent and then even start small-scale production).
I'm not saying that we have to protect the likes of NTP because of what I've just said, but I think there is some validity in these kind of companies that help out an individual. I don't know what that balance is or what kind of rules you would create to make sure that the system doesn't eventually kill innovation (especially from the small-time guy).
When you get a Blackberry, you don't get it just from RIM.
RIM makes the devices themselves, but not the networks that they access. If you wanted to get a BB today, you'd go down to your local cellphone company of choice (well, of the ones that support the device you want to buy), and buy the handset and service from them. You might be able to buy the BlackBerry itself separately, but you're still going to need to go to a cell phone company to get service.
So you go to TMobile or whatever. They are the "operator." They have a system, also purchased from BlackBerry, which handles talking to your handheld device through their cellular network, and sending it email. When somebody sends an email to your BlackBerry's address, it goes first to RIM, and then to the cell-phone company's system, and then to your device. I'm not too familiar with how the BlackBerry system works (the changes in response to the patent involve where the email is being stored), but basically one of the reasons why RIM has been so successful, is that they make life pretty easy for the cellular carriers to offer BB service to their customers.
So the GP was speculating that this change might make life more difficult for the cellular carriers.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I think if you came up with a patent for cold fusion, the energy companies would just kidnap you, torture you into transferring the patent to them, and then arrange for you to have a horrible-yet-regrettable accident while standing over the inlet hopper of a grinding machine at a dog food factory.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If I read some of the posts and the junk surounding this issue. The big problem is that RIM holds the mail and pushes it as soon as you log back into the network.
If that's the case, just change it and have the BB specifically request the mail.
Current: BB: Hello I'm back. RIM: That's nice, here's your mail. Non infringing: BB: Hello I'm back, can I have my mail. RIM: That's nice, here's your mail. From what I saw of the workaround blurb, RIM is just going to store it offsite and then request it back so they can push it just like they do now.
By the way, IMO, if either of these things circumvent the patent then it's less useful than an equivalent weight of toilet paper.
Its amazing how these patents work out on paper. Reading patents a while back while researching I could swear that a dozen different patents were the same damn thing. If RIM gets their work around its likely to end up being hundreds of millions of dollars in modifications all for a line of text no longer than my slashdot post inserted into a half dozen different places in one patent that looks 99% like NTP's. Thats got to be at least a million bucks per character.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
a gazillon lawyers are gettings paid a gazillon dollars per hour and they would have spotted this
I'm not so sure. My lawyer misses things that I think are obvious, but catches things that I never would have thought to look for. There may be a reason we spent years studying different subjects. I don't read whatever it is he reads, and I doubt he'd know what an RFC was or where to find it unless someone told him.
--MarkusQ
I, personally, have several ideas that I think are "patent-worthy". I cannot afford a patent let alone the costs of (pre-)production. So let's say I scrape together enough cash to make a patent ($400-$5000 depending on the route you go), now what do I do with it? My options are to produce the product (I have already established that this is out of question financially), wait for someone to infringe on my patent and sue them (expensive and risky, especially for an individual trying to feed a family), or sell my patent to someone else.
The original point of patents was not to feed the inventors family, but rather to promote scientific innovations that benefit the society (or at least American society) in general. The goal was as sort of a carrot on a stick to grant inventors temporary monopolies so that they could bring their market to product and reap the benefits of that and then afterwards anyone could copy that invention.
If you can't do that in 17 years, then your invention was most likley not that innovative.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The government has the ability to use 'iminent domain' to give you 'fair market value (ha!)' for your house or land. It would be interesting to see it extend to this as well.
I can imagine cases where there may not actually (yet) be a product. My neighbor is working on a project now, for example, and has something like 37 patents. Some cover the device in total, the rest are for each piece. He's still working on it, ironing out all the miscilaneous wrinkles and such, so he doesn't currently have a working unit.
That said, if you give him an exemption because he's still 'working on it' then what's preventing a company from claiming the same thing? Perhaps a set period of time, say five years, from patent filing to product?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Basically - if their NOC shuts down due to power (or backup) failure, virus infestation etc. the entire world's population of CrapBerries is dead in the water. Even with a backup NOC, there are about 5 million units worldwide that route through the Waterloo NOC and rely on it's monitoring their status, so they can "push". At least with this workaround (ahem, subterfuge) there will be other storage locations to store the messages, but also many new points of failure. Presumably the NOC must still tell the remote message stores (BES or carrier servers) to start sending - still making the NOC the Achilles heel. Suerly they must have redundant internet and dedicated links to the major US carriers, but also routed through common routers - but what if all their fibre is cut by a bulldozer?
The Hiptop 1, at least, would check for new messages from the server every 5 minutes or so. It wasn't true push.
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
IMO RIM is a vile corporation and a blight on society. We would all be better off without these obtrusive devices cluttering up our lives. I firmly stand behind NTP and favor a shutdown of all service inside the U.S. Write to your congressmen and let them now how you feel about this despicable undesirable corporate tick.