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RIM Chairman Wants Changes to U.S. Patent Law
florescent_beige writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that James Balsillie '... called on U.S. lawmakers yesterday to fix a system that he says boxed the company into one of the largest legal settlements in U.S. history.' Although this will do nothing to change the $612.5M(US) settlement RIM was forced to sign with NTP, Mr. Balsille says he wants to help 'assure that no other company experiences what we endured over the past five years.' Mr Balsillie's rhetoric was direct: he said RIM's treatment at trial was like '... a judge in a murder case pondering execution while ignoring DNA evidence that exonerates the accused ... RIM was virtually held up for ransom by NTP...'"
Patent Law Views from EconLog
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I was holding out for a longer court battle, in the hopes that more and more crackberry addicted suits would be forced into looking at patent reform. I'll take what I can get but it would be nice to have more than one chairman on board.
I didn't closely follow the case but if memory serves it went something like this:
1) RIM and NTP originally tried to negotiate an agreement so that RIM could use NTPs patented idea
2) No agreement was reached so RIM walked away
3) RIM, despite knowing of NTPs patented idea, went ahead and developed a communication system based directly on NTPs patent
4) RIM got caught and had to pay for its mistake
Am I missing something or is this just a case of someone getting caught and whining about it? I'm sincerely curious, not trolling.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Is this not the same company that sued Handspring over the shape of the buttons on their Treo keyboards?
I'm not saying the circumstances are the same, and the article doesn't make clear what reforms he wants (apparently patents with hundreds of claims are seen as problematic, and I agree)... it just strikes me as a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I personally am more against the extremely low standards for novelty and non-obviousness than anything, which is why RIM striking out against patents sticks in my craw. But hey, maybe they've now seen the light and realize patent holders simply have too much power.
The enemies of Democracy are
"NTP's eight original patents, for example, contained an average of 240 claims each, including one with 665 claims, Mr. Balsillie said."
Coming from someone with granted patents, patents pending, and patent applications on the works, I can tell you that 665 claims is totally ridiculous in a patent.
I propose NTP's lawyers be sent -airless- to outer space, that company's executives be hanged, and its servers donated to a Barbie website. Hot pink.
Lordy.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=assure
Definition 4. Damned grammar nazis!
The patent system certainly needs some fixing, but outlawing stupid CEOs at the same time would also be a big help. I'm not going to get my hopes up though.
It would have been interesting if RIM had called NTP's bluff and provoked an injunction.
While the damage to their business would have been grave, it would have been interesting to see them FIRST shut down all government users en masse.
If they could have delayed the shutdown of commercial systems by a few days or weeks, they might have gotten congress to pass special legislation putting a stop to it.
I wonder what shutdown options were discussed in the board room.
...a Canadian company is on the receiving end of US courts?
For a fraction of that they could have hired hitmen for all the NTP management and thier legal counsle.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Streaming media
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http://www.streamingmedia.com/patent/
But it now
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060312-636
Netflix vs blockbuster
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?ty
It was only a matter of time before the gold-rush of patents turned into a pain in the ass. It's still there, the culture of routinely filing for patents for complete nonsense, I mean. The changes that are needed are pretty well thought-out by thousands of people and organizations out there. Now's the time to get their ideas moving. And clearly since both the senate and congress are addicted to crackberries too, I don't suspect this will be a hard issue to get onto the floor.
Kill off software patents and kill off business process patents and that'd likely take care of the bulk of the problem right there. And since it seems that most of these frivolous patents are simply defensive in nature, I'm pretty certain the many level-headed execs out there would not mind relinquishing their defensive weapons so long as it's a unilateral disarmament.
Where has the Neo Liberal Canadian Government been in all this?
Canada's breakout convergence darling, our future NOKIA gets beaten with some BULLCRAP legal play by a collection of yankee lawyers -- forcing the company to hold still for years (customers doubt their viability, causing them to divert attention from conquering the world).
Where was our government in all this? Why was a Canadian company being brow beaten by a housefull of lawyers? One reason: If RIM was AMERICAN, some in-house politico would have stopped it Pretty Darn Quick.
$650 million was EXTORTED from RIM. Ive been pissed about this (i dont work for RIM or hold shares), but my vote is we burn NAFTA. It really blows getting burnt by your money grubbing patent laws (America to world: "we own IDEAS(!)). Stuff it.
It's more likely this call for attention from RIM will encourage more curiousity of how to exploit these legislative loopholes rather than start the reformation of a broken system. It's a new way to milk your competitor. The only people hit by this will be the slow, poor, or legally-inept losers. And those are irrelevant voices in making legislation today anyway it seems.
I really hope I'm wrong though. Reformation has to start somewhere.
Laws are written with the pretext that it will better serve the citizens, but with the posttext that it servers the politicians in giving them power over those they serve. No change to the law will make a difference -- politicians don't write laws the way we want them written, and many of them don't even read the bills that they vote into law. Don't be surprised when the "Fix the Patent System Act of 2007" is passed, and all it does is incorporate 500 pork barrel items not pertaining to patents, as well as some changes that only give Congress more power over something it was never meant to destroy. Yes, Congress has the right to make patent laws, but they were supposed to exist for a short period of time to protect individual inventors, not megacorporations who create nothing and stifle innovation.
If we want to change the system, we need to get these laws in front of the Supreme Court, over and over and over. Don't let them tell you no, just keep refiling under new pretenses. Stop voting for the monsters who make the laws, and consider all the bad laws on the books.
What we need is a President who does nothing but veto, over and over and over. That won't happen. What we need is Senators to be elected by the state governments like it was before the 17th Amendment was passed -- Senators who think about the power of the state over the power over of the federal government. That won't happen. What we need is to reduce the power of the two parties by throwing out all campaign finance laws ("incumbent protection acts") and also throwing out the control of the debates. That won't happen.
It isn't just the patent laws that are broken, it is the system. Instead of a Republic of Independent States, we have a democracy of statism and authoritarianism. Don't expect it to get fixed, not as long as you continue supporting the monsters in office -- from both parties.
As a point of references, some history is useful.
/ 2100-1040_3-257801.html?tag=st.ref.goo
RIM made lots and lots of noise about their own IP, and have gone after lots of people before finding themselves on the other side of the ball.
"RIM is alleging that Good is infringing on its patents, according to the suit. The first is "for a method and apparatus to remotely control gateway functions in a wireless data communications network." The second "relates to a method and system for loading an application program on a device." The third "relates to a method and system for transmitting data files between computers in a wireless data communications environment."
or this one
"Ontario, Canada-based RIM charges in a suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware that Glenayre Technologies violates a patent granted last month to RIM protecting the way the BlackBerry redirects e-mail from a computer or server to a handheld using a single e-mail address." - http://news.com.com/RIM+wins+patent%2C+sues+rival
Anyways, my point is that RIM really loved patents when they could shut out their competition with them, but disliked them when someone heard them making lots of noise about their IP and said, wait a minute, we have patents in the same area. Despite extrodinarily preferential treatment by the USPTO (ie, no one else will get patents they context reviewed that fast ever), they still were unable to prevail.
Something def needs to be fixed on the patent side, but there is something interesting also about RIM getting some of its own medicine. I wonder if someone has a more complete history on their annoucements on monetizing their IP portfolio.
From the horse's mouth. Research In Motion Files Wireless Patent Complaint Against Glenayre Electronics, Inc
I guess what goes around come around, at least in this case.
The person transcribing this might not know the difference between assure, ensure and insure, any of which could have been used and sound pretty much alike.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
seems like an easy change would be to require a full review by the patent office once a lawsuit has been brought. the lawsuit would not be allowed to proceed until a final determination has been made. that would seem to address the RIM case where the patents are well on their way to being rejected.
You could see that a hypocritical, but I prefer to see it as someone having their eyes opened once they became the victim of the system. People can learn from their mistakes and become more enlightened.
If they were just self serving and opportunistic I don't see why they would keep campaining on the issue now that their own problems have been solved.
Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.
Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.
Actually, you got that backwards. The WTO has ruled a number of times that Canada isn't dumping softwood on the market and that the billions in tarriffs that the US has been collecting is illegal and owned back to the Canadian lumber companies.
I have seen no evidence for staunch nationalism in our civil courts. We treat Canada the same as the other 50 states.
OK, RIM, you liked patent law just fine when you were suing Handspring for having a tiny keyboard. But NOW it's time for Serious Patent Reform!
Uh huh.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The point is that, according to pretty much every dictionary, they two words share a common meaning. I think I would probably consider the major dictionaries to be a more scholarly source than you on the meaning of words.
The point is, that according to my ideolect, the sentence sounds fucked up.
You quote the dictionary as proper usage, the other guys quotes tradition as proper usage, and I rely upon my instinct and my ideolect. As a native speaker of English, I am afforded the right to do that.
It's all in who you trust. If you want to trust the arbitrary authority of your dictionary or "common usage", which both say that a proper pronunciation for "nuclear" is "nookyoolur", then go ahead, but perscriptionists are still going to tell you it's wrong.
If he wants to trust the arbitrary authority of tradition, and the way things used to be--or should be--then he'll mandate that "nookyoolur" is an abomination against God, and that anyone who says "nuclear" that way should be shot. But anyone who cares about common usage, and dictionaries is going to tell him that he's being over bearing.
If I want to trust my trained ear that tells me how to speak English, then I'll say that "nookyoolur" is going to be pronounced in a hundred different ways, and no one person is correct. I'd also say that using "assure" like the guy in the article is wrong.
It all depends on who you want to trust, you all go ahead and enjoy all the authority that you just abdicate your own sense of English to, and I'll trust myself, because I'm the only person who isn't going to lie to me.
Also, please note, I'm not complaining about pronunciation, I'm not complaining about spelling, I'm not complaining about anything related to actual Grammar. I'm complaining about an unusual word choice, that it appears is valid for only some subset of the English speaking world. (Note: since I am an English speaker, and I object to this usage, it must therefore be a subset, even if I'm the only person objecting, which I'm not.)
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
To read the exact excerpt (where Balsillie made the point quite eloquently), read this
Why not let them judge for themselves:
1 7%2C592
% 2C436%2C960
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=patent+6%2C3
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=patent+5
Here's the last two patents in question.
For Open Source works.
I fully understand, if a Company exploits a technology, a Companies sole motivation being economical, then they need to pony up a share to those who well deserve it.
However, for the person in his garage who isn't economically motivated, since he's not being paid for the direct effort and since he wishes to freely release his work, then the "patent holder" isn't "losing" money because there's no money exchanged to begin with; in short, noone is making money yet everyone is benefiting. Secondly, the individual is incapable of such magnitudes in all aspects of "Companies" in terms of distribution, research and development, wealth/power, manufacturing etc.
In short, I feel that patent law should ONLY be applicable to Companies. I would even extend this to any laws prohibiting reverse engineering as well; such that it's only illegal if you attempt to generate revenue in any way from your findings. Some upstart soundcard company reverse engineering Creative's work to market and distribute merchandise for sale should be illegal, but someone at home reverse engineering a Creative soundcard to write drivers for the Open Source community, or hardware hacks of any extreme, should be immune from any legal consequences, no matter how many others use the work; and becuase an "individual" would be lawful in doing such activities while companies aren't, companies that use what "individuals" have done lawfully (reverse engineering etc.) would still be required to pay royalties to relevant patent/copyright holders.
But, regardless of what those in power choose, I'm going to do what I feel is right.
Just looking back at the comments in this thread is really sobering.
/. or the other simply doesn't know the facts.
All the posts that get modded up fiercely defend one side or the other, and accuse the other side of being utter slime.
These extreme positions (mine above included) all get modded up, and they all get modded overrated.
I'm past believing that one half of
I think the explanation is that we all think of patents as a tool to safeguard innovation, but we all think that system has broken down. This case illustrates that fact in different ways for different people:
either
1) It's a case of a large company vs. a little guy. Large companies in this system churn out spurious patents which clog the USPTO. They constantly cry out for strict protection for intellectual property, claiming innovation dies without such protections. When they get attacked for violating a little guy's patents, they act appalled, and cry bloody murder. This case points to the hypocrisy of megacorps in an era where the little guy who just wants to help the world is squeezed out of innovating, because he can't afford the expensive patent lawyers it takes to just get started.
OR
2) It's a case of a slimy law-saavy company who abuses the system, waiting to prey on any successful innovation without actually helping society get better by bringing anything to market. The patent system shouldn't protect people who game the system, waiting to pounce on companies that develop a working product. This case represents how the bogged down patent system represents a minefield where any inventor is always clueless as to whether they've stepped on someone else's toes or not.
I suspect neither account is entirely accurate, but both have some truth.