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

old is new...

[tomstdenis]

What about the folks using packet BBSes in the 80s? Surely that's wireless email :-)

I think a large problem with patents is that society as a whole doesn't remember anything past 5 years ago. Kids honestly think that "hotmail" for instance, was the first e-mail provider or most significant, (mostly because they're so young that the oldest computer they touched was a P4 in 2000 or whatever).

That being said I hate crackberries so I'm kinda for RIM getting screwed.

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.

YATC

[rohar]

Computers/IT being a relatively recent technology, I think the patent problems are just starting. In thermodynamics, the patent system has allowed the steam engine to be re-patented weekly and there was prior art for the basic concept that substantially predates the patent system itself.

Yet Another Thermodynamic Cycle syndrome is just starting for IT and the center of the problem is not the patent system. The problems are that capitalism is unbridled and there is profit in litigation. I have a difficult time visualizing a patent system reform that will actually improve innovation because it never comes down to who is the inventor, it comes down to who has the resources to hire the most and best lawyers. There really isn't much point in attempting to obtain a patent if you have a good idea or product but don't you don't have a large corporation behind you. Either your idea is crap, you are so far ahead of your time no one will "get it" or a larger company will pick up on the idea. In whichever situation, a patent isn't going to help. I would think generally the type of person that invents anything truly innovative, isn't the type of person that wants to spend their life in a court room and dealing with the legal system.

I believe the Internet will eventually change this. If a good idea is spread very quickly, it reduces to a commodity very quickly. If one company "steals" your idea, many will. My opinion is that unless you want to spend your life in court, it's simpler to just publish your ideas in an open manner and then develop a business model around the sub-components and consulting. This is very similar to the Open Source vs. Proprietary software model. If you have a new idea that has value but you have minimal resources, you cannot show the profit of Microsoft, but you can be Red Hat.

Re:What's the solution?

[aplusjimages]

Okay, so reform is needed. But what's the solution, though? Is it legislation-based? Is it market-based? We have to make sure the solution doesn't fuck us over more than the problem it's trying to solve.

I've heard of a proposal where you pay a fee each year, but the longer you own the more the fee goes up. So for the first year it's $2, then it doubles from there each year. So if you are actually applying your patent to work, then hopefully your making a profit to cover the fee each year. The fee will eventually become so expensive that most owners of patents will have to stop paying. Once you stop paying the fee it becomes public domain.

This would prevent people from owning multiple patents that they do nothing with (unless you count suing people for using it.)