Wireless Email Patents Vs. Innovation

Exactly a year ago Slashdot discussed Geoff Goodfellow's early contributions to wireless email and how they were conspicuously absent from the NTP vs. RIM patent fight. Techdirt points us to another early wireless email innovator, Nicholas Fodor, who recently came to the notice of the NY Times. Techdirt uses Fodor's story to highlight the problems with the US patent system that are by now so obvious to this community.

Comments

Should not be able to patent something so general

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Using wireless communications to deliver electronic mail is such an obvious solution, it should not be patentable at all. The patent office is over worked and such patents would definitely slip through. But definitely we should be able to challenge and have the patent invalidated. How did RIM manage to lose such a case? I think it was a business decision by RIM, to lose the case. Though it lost some 650 million dollars, it gave tremendous credibility to the patent and thus all future competitors would be shut out. Since the patent holder does not really provide any services, RIM is left to be the monopoly intact with a high cost of entry for its competitors.

Many in the Linux community look at the Novell-Msft deal for precisely this reason. "I will pretend to beat you, you pretend to cry" and in that process we will create the impression that I am a unbeatable big honcho on the hill.