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RIM Strikes Back, Files Countersuit Against Visto
SilentOne writes "Research In Motion Ltd. launched an all-out assault on competitors yesterday, countersuing its latest legal nemesis and introducing software to pre-empt imminent launches by other challengers. The countersuit also gives RIM a chance to move the patent battle to a courtroom where it has a better chance of beating Visto. Visto filed suit against RIM on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, which reportedly favours patent holders in 92% of cases heard by the court. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-chief executive, said the company wants the trial moved to the Dallas area, where RIM's U.S. headquarters are located, for practical reasons.
Meanwhile, RIM is giving away a free software package, valued at US$3,000, to hook the e-mail accounts of small businesses and consumers up to BlackBerries instead of competitive devices from Palm and Microsoft."
This just highlights fundemental flaws in our countries IP laws. Here is a successful company with a sought after product, and they can't keep themselves out of court for violating IP concerns.
Nevermind the technical merits of said device, which I have never owned or had to work with.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
They are "suing" to have the patents overturned.
Can't blackberries access a pop acount? Or this this just not good enough? Or you can't you set up e-mail forwarding directly to the users blackberry account if you need "push" mail? Or doesn't this work? I just don't really understand where this estimated software cost is coming from? Do blackberries use weird custom protocols? On a side note, I'm getting my replacement treo600 tomorrow! It succumbed to the known "no service" battery fault a while ago, not to mention a broken top panel by the sd card, with missing buttons, broken volume buttons and a loose antenna. Good thing I have the replacement option paid for. But this had me thinking just how "rugged" are blackberries physically? As far as I know, they have quite similar features as the treo. The cell phone is probably the part I use the LEAST on the thing :) But it has really been through quite the torture test as you might have guessed. Any blackberry owners out there really abuse the thing?
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
I'm beginning to think I should have listened to my English teacher and gone into law, instead of I.T
Is that free as in beer, or free as in Open Source? :-)
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I'm always disgusted when I see the ridiculous "valued at" statements in advertising. I publish some relatively obscure free (GPL'd) software, so I suppose I may as well assert that it's "valued at $10,000,000".
What you're discussing is only a small portion of the problem. These sort of incidents are what will directly lead to nations like China and India taking the lead in technological developments.
While American companies are mired in legalities, and restricted in their ability to produce and innovate (two things which any successful economy requires), Indian and Chinese companies will not be so restrained. As American companies are wasting resources on petty legal fights over patents, Chinese and Indian teams will actually be taking part in the development of the next generation of technology.
Many suggest that the trade ties between China and the US are enough to prevent China from saying to hell with the US. Such people are naive. They don't realize that the 2 billion people of China and India far eclipse the American market. Soon enough, the demand for technology in China and India themselves will be enough to fuel future innovation, regardless of what the American market demands.
It's likely that in the future, historians will discuss how the freedom of innovation in places like China and India, and the lack thereof in the US due to excessive legal barriers, directly led to the decline of the US in favor of India and China.
Not only is this a standard troll, but it seems that the wikipedia article about slashdot trolling is creating a resurgance in trolls that should have been laid to rest.
Did you read it? It's the 20 MB file copying thing about OS 9 troll reworded to bitch about the fact that Macs don't get viruses. that's what makes it so funny. I mean, someone took the original troll and made it pro-Mac and funny. that's why I'm laughing.
"...said Deepak Chopra, an analyst with National Bank Financial..."
Must not be the same Deepak Chopra as this meditation nut.
I hope.
The whole series is of course:
I. The NTP Menace
II. Attack of the Lawsuits
III. Revenge of the USPTO
IV. A New Lawsuit
V. RIM Strikes Back
VI. Return of the Blackberries
Now available on DVD in classic and digitally re-mastered editions!
...launched an all-out assault on competitors...
Damn wallhackers. We'll get 'em next round, though.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Now what the MSRP for a piece of software (or, again, anything) is is it's value plus a profit margin that's determined by "what the market will bear."
It's true that when a company says their software is valued at $X that they're really telling you their MSRP, not its actual value, aka, its development cost.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
You gotta know that RIM is piasssed. After having to choke down NTP's garbage, they are out for blood. They are going to get MEDIEVAL on Visto! I pitty them fools.
is barely mentioned in TFA. What they're referring to is BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 Express.
Only a 1-User licence is provided for free, however.
RIM is obviously worried about Microsoft giving away push technology in Exchange Server 2003 SP2.
I'm so sick of being in meetings with people sit their like overgrown
children playing with their Blackberries when they're supposed to be
paying attention. My opinion is that these "tools" far from aiding business
actually cause far more time to be wasted than anything else yet devised
(including the cellphone!) as insecure middle management constantly check
for emails from the boss they're currently brown nosing. It they couldn't
use them I genuinely believe the business enviroment would be a lot
healthier.
Kind of like how America took the lead over Europe in the 19th century because Europe had relatively restrictive IP laws which America did not respect, so Americans (notably Edison) freely stole European innovations while Europeans were forced to respect American property rights and could not steal back?
Listen up, America. If you don't want to go the way of Europe and sink into mediocrity and irrelevance, you have two choices... either you loosen up your crazy draconian IP laws, or you declare all-out war on China and India. Sadly, the way things are going, I suspect it'll be the latter...
It certainly sounds to a lot of people like a bunch of IP parasites are taking it in turns to sue RIM in the hopes that they can cash in on its work and marketing by virtue of it being a foreign company and not used to the USA's sue-happy culture -- that certainly sounds like the NTP case in a nutshell.
My sig is too lon
Right. Restrictive IP laws are what made Europe irrelevent. Those two world wars really didn't do much to shape European culture. IP law, however, stamped its mark on the face of the continent forever.
And i thought they were such a 'nice' company that was being unfarily attacked, and they wanted to help ban software patents..
Of course they are just like everyone else.. Suckers
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is fairly obvious that NTP is trying to make an end run around it's recent settlement with RIM by inventing another lawsuit. These patent holding companies are absolute scumbags that make their profits on filing these stupid lawsuits. They don't sell a product at all - their only income is from litigation. *GRRRRRR*
As far as I can figure, it's like a Palm Pilot. Only with fewer features and instead of a large touch-screen you can write on or bring up a keyboard on if you have trouble writing, it has a teeny tiny physical keyboard.
I suppose it makes a fashion statement. That statement is apparantly, "Look at me, I can't understand how to use a touch screen keyboard, and I can't be expected not to lose the stylus anyway. I'm trendy!"
So there you have it. Blackberry: The Palm Pilot for the Duplo crowd.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
RIM is a Canadian company, and the US patents involved do not apply to RIM's business in Canada and presumably other non-US countries. The same situation will happen to other companies, whether they are in China or India, if they wish to do business in the US. So I do agree that the whole patent nonsense is impeding innovation, but if a company wants to tap into the US market, they're going to have to deal with this problem until it gets fixed (which, I suspect, I won't live to see).
You should have paid closer attention before responding. This is an anti-troll like the infamous BSD is Alive post from several years back. It's actually quite amusing, and would have probably done well if the author had waited for another "Mac is vulnerable to viruses; OMGWTFROFLOLBBQ!1!1!one!" story.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
People talk on cell phones in cars, too, but that doesn't mean that cell phones are useless things we shouldn't have. As for dweebs constantly checking their mail from their boss, blackberries have "push" email which informs you when an email arrives. You don't need to keep checking them all the time, like you would with a typical email server.
Given the poor grammar and rampant typos, this is probably a low-level employee, at best a technician/IT flunkie, at worst a shipping clerk. I wouldn't take his comments very seriously, certainly not the ones having to do with security, infrastructure, etc.
One simple rule for its versus it's
World wars weren't in the 19th century. :P
if a company wants to tap into the US market
For many Indian and especially Chinese companies, US market may soon (5-10 years) be almost irrelevant, especially if there is a big difference in IP laws between the countries. If you're likely to lose more on court battles than you're likely to make on sales, then there's no point in coming to the market in the first place, no matter how big it may be. And Japan will likely be more than happy to concentrate on Asian market as well, if US market becomes too expensive.
And if Asian countries want to get agressive in an economic war, they'll just concentrate on stiffling innovation and economy in the US by abusing the legal system...
I see your point, but the 2 billion oppressed people aren't always able to purchase technology. Hey, I am not oppressed (directly) and I can't afford a Blackberry or an iPod!!
King of kings and Lord of lords
Right. Restrictive IP laws are what made Europe irrelevent. Those two world wars really didn't do much to shape European culture. IP law, however, stamped its mark on the face of the continent forever.
After the second World War, in lieu of the more converntional wars reparations demanded of Germany by France, Britian and Russia such as cash repayments, industrial production curtailments, etc, America chose instead that its war reparations be paid for in the transferral of patents held by german holders, to american companies.
The spoils of war were not sent to the treasury, but rather to the USPTO.
May the Maths Be with you!
Much as I disagree with the overbearing and wasteful IP laws in the US, the complete lack of restraint in China (and maybe India too, I don't know as much about them) is equally problematic.
Right now, China is still playing technological catch-up with the rest of the world. China really doesn't need to bother with indigenous innovation today, since they can easily acquire superior technology from outside their borders. At the rate that their industry is advancing, however, they are quickly nearing parity with the West. When that happens, they face a new problem: if IP is held worthless within the borders of China, their indigenous businesses will constantly poach each other's ideas, ensuring that the reward for innovation is very low (and, therefore, research won't get any funding at all).
As much as I hate to say it, the IP mess in America is better than nothing at all, if you want to provide support for innovation. If ideas have no monetary value, and therefore nobody can make a living off of creating new ideas, then you're going to have some trouble encouraging people to create new innovations. China simply won't be able to take the lead without either copying the patent mechanism, or coming up with something similar...
While what you write seems to bear a resemblance to our current situation, it is both fortunately and unfortunately not accurate.
Real technology transfer has yet to really happen. Many companies know all about the flagrant disregard for intellectual property exhibited by China and they closely guard their secrets.
Furthermore, there is not yet the development of a market which can support the kind of research and development required to produce a company like Cisco or IBM, that takes years of experience and lots and lots of money. There is no public accountablility for companies in China, no functioning stock market, relatively little venture capital, no foreign banks allowed to hold assests without Chinese partners, no representative democracy.
It takes much more than two billion people to make a market. It takes infreastructure and good governance. China and India severly lack those things.
$10 trillion economy doesn't become irrelevant. It might be wishful thinking on your part but people in business take more pragmatic approaches.
No offense to you, but that's why we tend to make money and people like you don't.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
> $10 trillion economy doesn't become irrelevant.
;-)
Huh? Of course it will! It's just a question of when. Roman economy is currently irrelevant. Spanish economy is irrelevant. UK economy is irrelevant. US economy will be irrelevant. Let's hope it won't happen very soon though.
You see, most of that $10 trillion figure depend on most of world trade being in US$, and US foreign debt being $ as well. If that changes, and if it changes too fast, then there'll be trouble... And there will be change when Chinese and Indian economies grow bigger than US economy... And especially if European economy grows much bigger than US economy (but I doubt that very much, unless something extraordinary happens with Eastern Europe and Russia...)
> It might be wishful thinking on your part
Let me assure you that I'd be just as unhappy as you, if not more so, if it were to happen any time soon, 'cos it would be a Bad Thing for both of us, probably...
> No offense to you, but that's why we tend to make money and people like you don't.
So you're a lawyer...?
China, India and the US are in a death grip with one another. For any one party to pull out and 'change the ruleset' would mean their exclusion and destruction.
Thats globalization for you, Mutually Assured Economic Destruction. Some interesting reading on this is in a great book called 'The Pentagons New Map', highly recommended no matter where on the political spectrum you fall.
It will take -decades-, if not longer, for these countries to create enough of an internal market for these gadgets and that is plenty of time for restictive societies like the EU and the US to change their ways. And thats assuming that these countries still exist in their current form in 30, 40 or even 50 years.
Never underestimate the flexibility of the western world.
They don't realize that the 2 billion people of China and India far eclipse the American market
Except the fact that the VAST majority of those 2 billion ppl are poor as shit and can't buy anything you have to sell. Numbers of people do not equate to a "large market". Numbers of people with money to spend is what qualifies as a "large market".
And when you measure like that, the US IS the largest and most well funded market for products in the world. By a long way.