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.

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.)