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The Real Inventor of Wireless Email?
theodp writes "The NY Times reports on Geoff Goodfellow, possibly the real inventor of wireless e-mail, who says NTP was concerned that his earlier work might undermine its patent claims and went to some lengths to ensure that it did not, including gagging Goodfellow during the RIM lawsuit. Not only did high-school dropout Goodfellow - who hung out as a teen in the lab of Doug Englebart -
describe wireless e-Mail in 1982, he implemented it in the early 1990's."
For a guy who has some great moral opposition to patents, he didn't seem to mind taking a 20k payoff to help a company exploit a patent to extort millions from RIM. Doesn't that seem a bit hypocritical to anyone else?
I get steamed when people suggest that every new combination of communications channel and message format is an invention. A new communications channel is an invention, and a new communication format is an invention, but merely thinking "hey, we could do that over this"?
I think not.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
The first page should ample reason for research into claims that should result in this lawyer being disbarred and financially punished. For an officer of the court to intentionally conceal knowledge from the courts is a terrible terrible thing. In the first page, there is confirmation of prior art and conspiracy to conceal it.
For those reasons alone NTP should also have its relevant patents revoked and RIM shouldn't be paying a dime to them.
More importantly, who first said, "You've got mail"?
http://www.asti-usa.com
I hereby declare prior art for non-obvious method and concept of wireless e-mail while high (*).
*) While high also implies such concepts as "on weed", "stoned" and any other such concept derivable from THC based mind fuck.
Bot Assisted Blogging
To me the most interesting part of the article was Yet another brilliant illustration why patents don't help independent inventors. Is there a site collecting all these stories?
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
http://www.teslascience.org/
His equipment was not very portable though.
I mean, email was invented first, and I am sure someone has a patent for that. Just because the transport medium is wireless instead of over a wire, is there any validity in a patent for "wireless" email? If I had patented email, I would have said over ANY approrpirate digital transport, wired or wireless. Shouldn't the original email patent holder basically hold the patent for "wireless" email?
This is where patents break down, when people simply mash two patents together and feel they are justified for having a patent based on other people's work. Wireless communcations is patented, as well as the concept of email. Someone saying, hey, lets patent wireless-email should be shot.
I am sure there were inherent difficulties and specific problems that had to be resolved before making wireless email work properly, but come on. This is the application of two existing patented process, not the INVENTION of a new process.
This is why patents are failing to encourage innovation, because people with a law degree are simply taking combinations of other peoples inventions, mashing them together, and hoping that someone one day might use the right combination of inventions so they can sue them in courts for stealing their "innovation".
Patents are stifling innovation because they are being filed by people with no intention of developing the process, simply sitting on them until someone that actually makes the idea work is successful enough to earn them millions in a lawsuit for infringement.
Patents are shyster documents designed to make shysters richer.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Very few things are really done for the very first time.
A high-school dropout, Mr. Goodfellow had his light-bulb moment in 1982, when he came up with the idea of sending electronic mail messages wirelessly to a portable device -- like a BlackBerry.
Morse code to portable radios is WW I and field radios would qualify as a message over wireless to a portable device.
See Wiki wireless and note the part about telegraphs being sent.
The sum of it is this guy is a publicity whore and these patents are all frivolous so should be treated as such. Or perhaps it is more correct to say all these patents are patents on prior art. Take you pick, like NTP they are fraudsters.
Am I missing something? Maybe theodp needs some sleep?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"Mr. Wallace [the NTP lawyer] maintained that Mr. Goodfellow was retained because he had been mentioned in news articles from the early 1990's "regarding a product called RadioMail" -- his effort to commercialize the wireless e-mail idea -- but that Mr. Goodfellow "could not locate any documentation beyond these articles regarding the product.""
Wow, it's a good thing google wasn't around at the time to help.
Sheesh, I knew that RIM was getting some of their own medicine, so I was only partially sympathetic (both companies deserve a good legal slapping for pursuing such ridiculously obvious patents), but I had no idea NTP was THAT scummy. They knew about prior art. They hired the guy that was practically the embodiment of that prior art -- a guy that didn't merely have something on paper, but actually once ran a business on the principles NTP claimed to be a novel invention at the time of its patents. And they paid him to sign a contract to shut up.
Can this Mr. Wallace be disbarred for such unethical behaviour?
Isn't there documented evidence of a much earlier wireless email system in operation?
Wasn't it Moses who came down from the hilltops saying he had received a message from god?
Now, that was either a beta crackberry or someone's having a laugh at our gullibility.
liqbase
Doesn't this mean NTP sued for damages using a patent they knew to be invalid? Doesn't this mean the USPTO knew the patent was invalid? Thanks to all the morons involved in this case for showing the world how broken the patent system is, you guys couldn't have done a better job if you had been competent enough to attempt such a thing. This case just keeps getting better and better, when are RIM going to file for damages against the USPTO? That is what it's going to take to draw the line in the sand, are RIM company enough to step up to the plate? I think not but I've been proven wrong before.
Or his Australian cousin, G'day!
So is his name Goodfellow or Goodnight?
We need more Goodeditors.
And what did the staff and students at the university of Hawaii use back in the 60s to exchange data digitally and near-instantatiously?
My goodness - they did things like invent the 'aloha' protocal that's still in use today on various media.
Nothing's new...
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
IPL A) "My client patented 'wireless' streaming media!, time for a lawsuit party!"
IPL B) "hold on, my client patented 'wireless' one-click buying... you won't get very far with that streaming media without me!"
IPL C) "Hey now, my client patented 'wireless' media plugins for 'wireless' browsers'... neither of you gets bupkiss without me!
IPL D) "Haha, my client trumps you all... 'wireless' Linux!"
IPLs A, B and C) "Stupid D, Linux is GPL
IPL D) "But, but, but my client SWEARS that he invented it and has promised me like 30% of the winnings!!!!!!, well I'll get paid a boat load to fight for it anyways!"
All IP Lawyers: "SWEET!!!!!!!"
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
A new communications channel is an invention, and a new communication format is an invention, but merely thinking "hey, we could do that over this"?
Thomas Jefferson, the original formulator of what is and is not patentable in America would disagree with you somewhat. He was rather stricter in his ideas of what was a patentable invention, i.e., the sort of invention that could be given a government enforced monopoly on copying.
He understood the difference between invention as an idea which could be passed mind to mind and no man or government has the right to control and the invention which was a device which required manufacturing; and thus could be held as a monopoly by force of arms.
Under Jefferson the Morse Code would not have been patenable, because it is a just an alternative alphabet. A pure abstract idea; and one already prevelant at that.
It was the telegraph that was patentable.
KFG
...so I'm submitting my patent for spintronic email now. I've a hunch there's something similar in the retail line. One-spintro-clicking? Spin-one-tricking? Spin-one-tron-clicking? Inventing is hard. I'm sure that if I could just see the right combination of spintronics and one-click I'd be rich.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Who invented Morse code over wireless? Morse code with signal lights?
What kind of lights? e.g. should using LEDs vs incandscent lamps mean a different patent? Does it matter which colour light is used? What about using non-visible light...
The way things are at the moment you could probably get a patent on sending Morse code by waving a flag (so long as nobody else beats you to the patent office.)
I get steamed when people suggest that every new combination of communications channel and message format is an invention. A new communications channel is an invention, and a new communication format is an invention, but merely thinking "hey, we could do that over this"?
Even then a new "invention" only really deserves a patent if it is sufficently different from what has gone before. e.g. using frequency modulated light to carry information probably shouldn't get a patent. But a frequency modulator for light might well be deserving of one.
But you have to wonder how the heck it can be legitimate to knowingly surpress facts in a court case. Ahh well I have always felt these suits were what happen when people that should be honest criminals become lawyers.
Morse, Tesla, Marconi, Edison... And their patents already expired.
SMTP over packet radio? Decades ago, not just nineties.
There you are, staring at me again.
Ok, I officially declare you can't get a patent on the following:
1. Doing something wirelessly that is now done with wires.
Why? The point of a wireless network is to make it transparent to the higher application layer as to whether it's wireless or wired.
Now, that doesn't mean a particular implementation can't be patented -- there's plenty of room for clever solutions to do things wirelessly to overcome the lag and chatty interaction problems.
2. Simulation of any real-world, or real-worldish thing on a computer.
Why? It's brutally obvious that someone may want to simulate something that already exists.
Now, that doesn't mean a particular implementation can't be patented. There's plenty of room for efficient implementations of simulations, or for clever algorithms to actually do the simulation. But the concept of a simulation of XYZ itself should not be patented.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It looks hypocritical but it should be a lesson to all of us. First, they flattered him by remembering who he was. Then they just wanted to talk to him to learn more of that history. Then came the "standard" NDA. The alarm bells should have sounded, but he was too close to the picture to even imagine what he knew was hard to find out. You can only imagine what kind of threats they could have leveled at him after he signed. The lesson here is that NDAs are always anti-social and have the potential for greater harm than you might realize. I can only hope that this backfires bigtime on the lawyers. In the meantime, beware and seek independent legal help when things don't seem right. Hiding evidence sure sounds like a crime.
RIM will not comment on the situation because they too are restrained. As the fine article has it:
"The moral of the story is that for a long time now the patent system has been misused," said Mitchell D. Kapor, founder of the Lotus Development Corporation, the software publisher, and an adviser to Mr. Goodfellow in the early 1990's. "If it had been properly used, NTP would never have been issued its patents, and they never would have had a basis to pursue a lawsuit against R.I.M."
They had the basis and they extracted the payment and fear of an injunction is going to keep them quit, forever:
Although the NTP patents have been tentatively invalidated by the United States Patent Office, a jury upheld NTP's infringement suit in 2002, and R.I.M. chose to settle the legal fight for fear of a federal court injunction against its popular service.
Half of the burn you smell is provided by NDAs. Non disclosure is an enemy of the truth and that's where abuse happens.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Some goon who was crap at grammar.
Um hams have been doing this for a while...
WTF do I care what some guy who's been dead for a few centuries *may* have thought? I've got two centuries of history on him, in a field (human innovation) which has evolved beyond his possible imaginings. If you want to resurrect him and get him up to speed opn what he missed, I'd love to talk it over with him. But speculating on what he may have thought absent such knowledge, and worse yet, giving his thoughts the weight of some sort of prophet? Pathetic. Think for yourself about what's changed. That's what he'd have done, I'm sure.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Hams have been doing email over packet radio since the 70's! They've also been doing wireless email over radio teletype before that! And if the issue is the portable receiver then I must still stand by those who were using tandy handhelds for packet.
Ugh got wireless. Ugh got email. Is Ugh too stupid to put the two together? Maybe if Ugh is a patent examiner at the USPTO. For everybody else, this is obvious.
As has been pointed out, he did some consulting - signed and NDA and stood by the conditions of it.
The thing that makes my mind boggle a bit, is that RIM doesn't seem to have made a big deal out of this. You'd think if you were trying to defend agaisnt a patent, you might try to invalidate that patent by point out prior art. Yes?
The impression I came away from this with is there's a guy who invented a great concept, walked away when the instance went belly-up and happily got on with his life.
There's NTP who made a fortune by lawyering up and leveraging their patents to shake down a market gorilla.
Finally there's RIM who built a great business out of other people's ideas - and seemingly were completely clueless as to the origins of the technology they've built their entire business model around. Personally I have little sorrow for the amount they had to pay NTP off with.
Jefferson is one of the people that helped write the Constitution, wrote quite a few papers back in the day pertaining to our government, and generally set the mood until Andrew Jackson came along and screwed everything up. We know quite clearly what he intended because he wrote about it. Same with the other founding fathers. Anyway, the beauty of this is that we don't care what technology you use. We only care about what it does. Yes, technology moves on. But the basic fundamentals of how it works, remarkably, don't advance as much as you'd think. The internet is similar to the telegraph networks of old, but you guessed it, technology makes it much more advanced. Still, the basic ideas are the same -- electronic signals going back and forth between two locations (with a few pit stops in the middle).
The reason people talk about Jefferson and friends is that they had a much smaller view of what government should do. Even with all the technology we have now, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, et al. would never have passed the DMCA, would never have given in to the media cartels, would never have allowed patents to be as frivilous and prevalent as they are today. Even the founding fathers who were more for restrictive government (I restrain from liberal/conservative as those lines have shifted significantly over time) would cringe at some of the junk that goes on today. I think we need to get back to the old-school way of thinking with our government. While they didn't have the internet back then, didn't have wireless email, didn't have DVDs and CSS, etc., I would trust them to regulate it a lot more than I do the current, post-WW2 regime. That is, they wouldn't regulate it. Companies would be free to restrict us, and we'd be free to circumvent that restriction. Patents for wireless email would never be granted.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
WTF do I care what some guy who's been dead for a few centuries *may* have thought?
.
Because he *may* have got it right? And because even if he got it wrong there may be instruction in examining the error?
But speculating on what he may have thought. .
I am not speculating, because he communicated using exactly the same communications technology we use today, hence his thoughts are still available.
Having examined his thoughts and relating them to the two and half centuries of history I have on him I know that:
Think for yourself about what's changed.
Absolutely nothing that has any relevance to his thoughts has changed, because his thoughts were not based on protecting your job; and, oddly enough, he appears to have had thousands of years of history on you, because he knew his history, and you do not appear to.
You cannot "think about it yourself" until you have supplied yourself with the relevant ideas to think about.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go formulate laws of motion. I understand there was some guy about 350 years ago who formulated some, and a guy 100 years ago who refined them somewhat, but those guys are long dead. What do I care about what they *may* have thought about motion?
It would just be a waste of my time to even read them and try to understand them, because so much has changed since then.
KFG
Were the RTTY machines aboard a WWII destroyer a "portable machine"?
The one thing that concerns me about this whole "wireless e-mail" patent business is that this basic functionality has been available in the amateur radio community for DECADES. Packet radio was pioneering in 1978 by hams in Montreal, Canada. Hams established "wireless" BBS systems through the 1980's, which provided an e-mail like feature via the message board. Further with the rise of the Internet hams have provided e-mail over the amateur radio bands; i.e. wireless e-mail. Perhap's I'm missing something, but this appears to be a pretty compelling prior art arguement. http://www.tapr.org/history.html http://www.winlink.org/History.htm
Algorithms shouldn't be patentable either, that's math. Notice I said [b]shouldn't[/b], the real world may say different.
Seems like a good idea for a site either in cooperation with Groklaw or through Wikipedia. Following their model folks could enter tidbits on obscure inventions to create a central repository for prior art. Such a site could influence the patent granting process. Folks can even anticipate future patent suits by establishing prior art on recent patent grants (from MS, Apple, etc.) as they make the news.
Can what Groklaw has done for the SCO case be done for the patenting process?
just say no to winlink
From my understanding, the patent in dispute here has to do with the ability to "push" email content to a device. RIM's solution to this was, as I understand, to change their methodology so that the client software asks "Do you want to read this?" and then PULLS the message instead.
If my understanding of it is correct, that's one helluva frivilous patent.
If someone discovers prior art does that mean the settlement between RIM and NTP is void? Can RIM go after NTP for damages?
Funny that Thomas Jefferson is mentioned. Isn't he one of the authors of a document known as the US Constitution that, last time I heard, is still quite relevant today? People who think "WWJD" must care what an idealization of some centuries dead prophet might have thought. I want to know what the giants, centuries dead or not, thought. Then, being an independent thinker, maybe I'll agree with them, maybe not.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Check out all my new 'inventions'!
- Wireless [insert previously wired device here]
- Wired [insert previously wirless device here]
I'm so smart!@!!@onEONE!! I PWN YUOR FCAE!
Point: Just making something wireless doesn't make you an inventor.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
"You've got mail" is grammatically correct.
Try saying "You have have mail" vs. "You have got mail"
Diagram the sentence if you must.
If you have got to be a grammar nazi, at least make sure you're correct.
You can find Geoff Goodfellow's note at the Telecom Digest archives. Note that the Telecom Digest has been running continuously since 1981, on the Internet and its predecessor (the ARPAnet), and is in some sense, the original ancestor of services like Slashdot.
And something like phase change cooling isn't just very simple applied mechanics and physics? I find it very hard to see why a reasonably complex algorithm should be lesss "practical" than a reasonably complex mechanical machine.
I worked for a company TVAnswer (renamed to Eon) that had wireless 2 way email working probably around 1993-4. It did not predate the NTP patents but it does show that it wasn't such a novel idea that other people did not think of it. It never went full production because the owners of the spectrum did not roll out base station in all markets but we did have very good connectivity in Reston Virginia a few sites in other states and several international cells. (Mexico City)
The Eon implementation used the IVDS spectrum, satellite based cell stations, a local rf link, connected to a handheld Casio Boss PDA (qwerty keyboard). We had direct Internet email addresses for all users.
Chuck
wireless email, that would be an alpha-numeric PAGER? prior art?
I suppose that anything that the US Government does that is not classified might prove to be in the public domain, and as such would invalidate NTP's claims altogether. The real deal is that in 1989, one of the agencies of the US Government used unencrypted radio to interconnect e-mail between facilities 700 miles apart. This was a hands-free, no operator intervention system (well, the operators DID have to change the HF radio frequencies every 4 hours or so due to propagation) that send and received E-Mail as transparently as with a 2400 baud telephone modem. Before that, amateur radio operators in the San Francisco Bay area had an automated e-mail system running on radio teletype on a VHF repeater ... you did have to log in to check and receive your mail, but this was in the 1981-1982 time frame ... predating the US Govt initiative.
Not to take anything away from Geoff Goodfellow ... I applaud his efforts.
Hey, morse code communication via blue LED isn't patented, nor is blue OLED. I have to hurry and patent that QUICK.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
last time I heard, is still quite relevant today
Could have fooled me... the Bill of Rights certainly seems to have been torn up and tread upon.
So NTP sues for patent infringement while silencing the inventor of the prior art that would have invalidated those patents? For that, NTP should be financially executed. Their company should be liquidated, if they actually own anything other than $600 million of RiM's money, and used to pay for operating costs for the patent office and legal system that they so flagrantly abused.
Just before the time RIM got going from an Asian company that had something similar working somehow using a pager network.
I told my superiors they should get involved because it was insanely handy. To this day, I wonder if that's where the basic tech came from those guys.
I once heard some kind of pop star say, "more money. more problems." I think that sums it up pretty good.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Patents should have to be specific. I know someone who has a patent on using X general purpose algorithm to do absolutely anything in Y huge and varied field. Come again?
Invention: description of design of an innovative machine to perform a task.
The TCP/IP network stack is designed such that application layers like e-mail are not affected if a new physical layer is invented. Because TCP/IP hides the physical layer implementation details from the application layer, *absolutely* nothing is required to enable email.
That is, nothing was *invented* in this case, because Blackberry takes an "already existing email application layer" and connects it with an "already existing wireless physical layer" via TCP/IP.
Why the F*** is the USPTO granting such trivial patents??
Around 1987 I was doing email SMTP over packet radio, using Phil Karn's network TCP/IP package for DOS.
There ought to be a death penalty for frivolous or fraudulent packet claims.
If a patent like this is able to succeed, then shouldn't it be a violation of the patent to use any device which utilizes any form of wireless networking and SMTP over that connection?
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
Al Gore invented this too.
Seriously.
- IP
Isn't he the dude with the TTY?
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Who invented Morse code over wireless?
Fucking Marconi. The art, she does not get much more prior.
That's just bullshit. If Jefferson were alive today he would take a big payoff from Disney corporation, pass the DMCA, and retire somewhere nice. That wasn't really an option in his day.
Quantum computing email, the ultimate in non-commital responses!
"Did you email me that report?"
"Well, I did and I didn't..."
Jefferson is one of the people that helped write the Constitution
No. Jefferson did not help write the Constitution. It was primarily written by Madison. Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention, he was in France.
Jefferson didn't like the Constitution.
Where does the "have have" come from? The comparison is between "you have mail" and "you have got mail", and the former is better than the latter.
I had a RadioMail account from 1992 (or was it 1993) until the service died. It was awesome.
I'm surprised at all the focus of the lawyers on the delivery of email to a pager, as Geoff had envisioned earlier. Goodfellow's RadioMail was all about getting it to computers. (I also had a packet radio modem using HAM bands where people were sending email back and forth wirelessly over BBSes in the late 80's, too, but that's another prior-art argument.)
In addition, the simple network paging protocol RFC1645/1861 went out in 1994, and things like skytel/skymail were also already rerouting internet email to pagers as a test service before then...
And then there was Motorola's EMBARC news/email service sent wirelessly to user's pcmcia pagecards, but I digress...
For those who care, the RadioMail service used one of two brick-like radio modems: Ericsson Mobidem and the Motorola InfoTAC. They spoke on the RAM Mobile Data network from BellSouth, or the ARDIS network from IBM/Motorola. These were serial devices and could work on any pc, but the preferred platform was the HP200/300 Palmtop computers. In fact, that's how they were bundled as a kit from RadioMail.
I also had one of the earlier Research In Motion CDPD modems, but it was big and bulky and didn't work almost anywhere I travelled. So, I kept using my RadioMail.
Geek Note: The old ARDIS service supported X.25. As a complete geek, I used to connect over X.25 to IP gateway, telnet to one of my UNIX boxes, and then run IRC in the telnet window. All from my HP palmtop, wirelessly. This was pretty damn cool in 1993.
wireless
e-mail
The mind boggles at the stupidity of putting those words together.
It's like saying "water sound". It means nothing - NOTHING.
Mail is mail, it has nothing to do with the conveyance. It's assinine.
That would be Concorde I believe. Although his exact words were "message for you sir".
(people took more care of the language in those days)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The dispute was not about who invented wireless email. it was about a particular method.