RIM Rejects More Patent Infringement Allegations

SilentOne writes "Waterloo based Research In Motion is facing new allegations of patent violation. Visto Corp. of Redwood Shores, Calif., said Monday that it had won an infringement case against Seven Networks, also of California, and is now targeting RIM for infringing four patents, including three involved in the Seven action. "Our case against RIM is based on similar technology, law and patents as the case we have just won," Visto said in a statement. "

Comments

Yea, software patents are bad.

[Inoshiro]

Straight from the innovations in software page, we have: "As patentability has increased, there's good evidence that the number of software innovations has decreased. Bessen and Maskin also demonstrated a statistical correlation between the spread of patentability in the United States and a decline in innovation in software. In particular, between 1987 and 1994 , software patents issuance rose 195%, yet real company funded R&D fell by 21% in these (software) industries while rising by 25% in industries in general. This paper gives additional evidence that software patents are inversely related to innovation; it's hard to not notice that as patenting become more common (e.g., 1987 and later) that the number of major innovations slowed down and are almost always not patented anyway."

The link supplied is to this PDF about patents. It's worth your time to read about this research.

Re:Well, I knowing first hand..

[thrillseeker]

Cut your losses. Take the blackberry service out of the US.

Thank God you're not the guy in charge of insuring shareholder value for RIM - you know - the people that own the company - yeah, they bought it, with their own evil money. Wanna see how far an $80 stock price can fall when you remove the source of the majority of its revenue? Wanna see if it makes any difference to a Canadian company if a US court rules against 'em? Think the Canucks are gonna send the mounties to the border, or enforce the US ruling? Really hard to figure out why you'll never run a major corporation.

Re:The saddest part...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Visto has no products. I guess their clients will be surprised to hear that. Clients like AT&T Wireless, Bell Mobility, KPN, Manitoba Telecom Services, Nextel Communications, Inc., Rogers Wireless, SaskTel Mobility, SmarTone, TELUS Mobility, Vodafone Global, Vodafone Germany, Vodafone Italy and Vodafone Spain (lifted from http://www.visto.com/about/index.html). "Visto's products are used by over 200,000 mobile professionals globally. Our enterprise customers include GE, Sara Lee, USA Credit Union, and Xerox."

And what are their products? Again, same web page:
"Visto Mobile(TM) is Visto's patented, operator-grade platform for mobile access to corporate and personal email, calendar, contacts (PIM) and other corporate data. Visto Mobile provides secure, IP-push, continuously synchronized, real-time access to email/PIM data for POP3, Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino servers via GPRS and CDMA 1x wireless networks. Visto Mobile Enterprise Server and Visto Mobile Personal Edition solutions support WAP and most other browser enabled phones or PCs, along with smart phones using Symbian OS, Palm OS, Windows Mobile for Smartphone and Pocket PC Phone Edition, and J2ME operating systems, as well as IMAP and SyncML-based clients. Visto's customized, brandable solutions are available through to mobile operators worldwide as a hosted service or a fully licensable and integrated platform."

Not exactly NTP....

Re:Well, I knowing first hand..

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean those dictators that the U.S. set up and armed?

Re:This is the danger of paying an extortionist...

[AgNO3]

You did see that Visto does sell a product right? They DO SELL a product and it is in common use.

http://www.visto.com/partners/wireless.html

So uh maybe RIM is just getting its just rewards for all the sueing it did.