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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!
Yes, however, POP does not support email pushing which is a large component of it's success. To have it constantly check a server and have to make a data connection with the towers kills the battery life. I believe treos actually, popup a message about it if you set the time to less than 1 hour.
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.
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.
"Valued at $3000". By who? How can they say something like this wiht a straight face?
Probably when the non-competition agreement with Microsoft expires.
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...
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).
Yes, because obviously the only thing to do is to keep cutting big checks to unproductive leeches taking advantage of the amazing incompetence of the USPTO to file lawsuits which have no basis in reality!
Please tell me you're not responsible for drawing up any company's business plan...
My sig is too lon
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...
My opinion is that these "tools" far from aiding business actually cause far more time to be wasted
I guess you would object to people bringing in their laptops to meetings too. How about a writing pad, it can be used to doodle on drawn non-work related images ? I think you need to realize that not everybody thinks and works like you and you need to accept and work with the differences. Yes some people abuse blackberries, but these people would very easily find some other distraction to replace it if you try to ban blackberries.I also wonder about the mentaility "It is not useful for me, so it must not be useful for anyone else and should be banned."