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Blackberry Injunction Postponed
Astin writes "The PTO has rejected the last of the NTP patents against Research in Motion. On top of this, Judge Spencer has decided that Blackberry service won't be shut down today, but he will issue a decision on the injunction 'as soon as reasonably possible.' RIM CEO Jim Balsillie just said on CNBC that it's 'quite possible' that NTP won't see any settlement from RIM at all now."
Interesting system in het States: no valid patents, but stil possible infringement... But then, hey, I'm a stupid European ;-0
I don't have a blackberry, but I've been waiting all morning for this news. I was wondering if the judge was going to shut down Blackberry service. I was thinking about how the government (or legislature) would respond if RIM was given 30 days to shut down their service. And hopefully it woulda been, a first step to the patent system being overhauled.
Oh well. This is probably the better outcome.
The famous U.S. v. United Shoe Machinery Company case of 1941.
United Shoe was caught abusing its patent portfolio to keep competitors at bay; this was the same rationale that got Rambus into a lot of trouble a few years back when courts said Rambus' patents on certain computer memory designs was used to keep DDR-SDRAM technology at bay in favor of Rambus' own RDRAM technology.
In short, NTP was abusing US patent laws to keep a competitor at bay.
Contrary to popular belief, legal professionals generally know what they're doing. People practicing in the area of patent law usually understand the technology (more likely than not far better than the typical /. commenter) and the implications of the law on the technology well enough to formulate reasoned conclusions. While your point of view is one that is considered, perhaps what you don't know is how damages are calculated in a patent infringement case.
... the invention simply wouldn't exist!
In your scenario, a patentee without the capability of producing the patented invention themselves would generally only be able to collect a reasonable royalty from an infringer. Steeper damages come when you can show, among other things, a loss of profits.
The oft cited justification for not doing what you recommend is "what about the little guy?" You are proposing essentially taking away a patentee's ability to negotiate a license for practicing the patented invention if they "sit on it for years." The law already does this, and simply asks that an infringer pay a "reasonable royalty" in this case. If the invention is so important that others might want to practice it, why shouldn't they want to pay a reasonable royalty? Reasonable royalties are controlled by market forces, and are in part a determination of what the terms and conditions for licensing would have been had the invention not been stolen.
It is important to remember the economic rationale that is glossed over in these discussions on Slashdot:
- If the invention is truly valuable, a would-be infringer would be willing to pay a reasonable royalty to use it. If they negotiate such a deal, cheers! If they accidentally end up using the patent and the patentee only sustained the theoretical loss you are concerned with, the law has you covered!
- If the invention is worthless, no one would be concerned with implementing it in the first place, or they have work-arounds.
- None of this would even be a question if the inventor hadn't patented it
Yeah, but in this case that doesn't matter. Today was the day, and all we needed to know was Blackberry staying or going.
Thats big news a little before quitting time on a friday. Especially since its a long holiday weekend here (mardi gras). Getting the news that blackberries would be shut down or not just before a 4-day weekend was big deal to us.
Han shot first.
Not sure if folks realize it but most of the government relies on Blackberries, including many mission critical areas... I'm not seeing any judge ruling them out anytime soon. A number of these agencies have been working (unsuccessfuly) on trying to port their info over to another form from the Blackberry and it ain't happening.
That is one company I see coming through all this with flying colors, or else they could make shit real bad for a lot of people.
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From I've read, NTP backed out when RIM wanted a provision that would force NTP to pay back some of the settlement fees if their patents were later ruled invalid.
I mean, really - if you're going to bluff, go all the way. Once you have the money, then it's up to RIM to try and collect later. Instead, they tried to double down against RIM, and they lost.