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NTP Sues Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that following in the wake of their patent suit against Research in Motion (RIM), NTP has filed suit against Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile for infringing on several patents. All of the patents in question relate to the delivery of email on mobile devices. "Five of the eight patents being used in the telco cases were the subject of NTP's 2001 patent suit against Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry. In November 2002, a jury found that RIM infringed upon NTP's patents. The case continued to make headlines until 2006, when RIM agreed to pay NTP a settlement of $612.5 million, nearly four years after RIM had first been found guilty of infringing on NTP's patents."
Because the BPAI may toss our patents any time and then we'll have to run though court processes to try to reassert ownership of some of these dubious patents.
I find the concept of leveraging open ideas, such as email, through some specific processes, abominable. It's not like these bastards invented email. So if I patent delivering a letter to someone's house by means of walking to my car, unlocking it, sitting in the driver seat, closing the door, putting on my safety belt, placing the key in the ignition, putting the car in gear, driving to the destination, reversing the previous steps, delivering the letter than repeating the whole previous process in reverse to return to home base and making note it has been delivered, I can sue anyone who does likewise. That's just stupid, but that's what's happening. Isn't it?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
NTP might have had a hold over RIM because their business was depending on continued service, but NTP just picked a fight with multi-billion dollar businesses who are not going to roll over. This is just like SCO picking on IBM. When you fight a well funded opponent you better make damn sure you got the goods because their *multiple* law firms will eat your lunch.
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This is why their crap should have been thrown out in the first place. They had no product, they had no real IP, and instead of being laughed out of court, they were allowed to rip off 600 million from a company that actually made it happen.
And now? Now they have a nice deep warchest to go after other people for violating their crap patents. If the goal was to create a spurious patent litigation industry, mission accomplished. Way to go legal system, way to go.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Maybe after getting hit by this large corporations will concede that some changes should be made; now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
or not. I don't know anymore. Crap like this makes my head hurt. I feel like Roy O'Bannon in Shanghai Knights. Go ahead, Chon, just kill me. I don't care anymore.
Why is something like this allowed to occur? It's obvious NTP has no intention of producing anything. What innovation is this patent helping to foster?
Is it that time again?
NTP are suing companies that stomp all over consumers who use their cell phones. Perhaps now they can feel like what it's like to be on the receiving end of a pointed stick.
I would suggest that these companies unite and invalidate NTP patents once and for all and do everyone a favor.
"they were allowed to rip off 600 million from a company that actually made it happen."
Excuse me, that's not what happened. RIM absolutely deserved to lose that $600M, through the sheer stupidity of their CEO. RIM GAVE that $600 Million away when they didn't have to.
First, RIM hires an utterly incompetent lawfirm to represent them. The defining moment of this case was when this lawfirm authorized a bogus demo of supposedly prior art andpresented this as evidence, but got caught. That pissed off the Judge to no end, and the case went downhill from there.
Then, just at the cusp of victory, when the U.S. Congress was set to act, and the Patent Office was set to act, RIM decided to fold and gave NTP $600 Million, setting everyone up for this next round of lawsuits.
Sorry, but RIM is a company of idiots, and deserves to lose every penny they get. And I'll bet their CEO still got a bonus for his actions.
The RIM lawyers pissed off the judge so badly in that case that they're lucky the judge just approved the $600M settlement. I think his preference would have been the death penalty. By the time it got to the appeals level, the facts established in the trial phase were basically impossible to overcome. Presumably, current defendants will have learned. Although NTP has a >$600M war chest, so don't look for them to be pushovers.
Is anyone familiar with the patents in question? Are they as general as "email on a handheld device via cellular network", or more specific? In other words, are they patenting an idea (algorithm, protocol, business method) or something tangible (the keyboard layout) ?
The US patent system to bea href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Reform_Act_of_2005" improving.
Let's hope that we'll get a Software Patent Reform Act of 2008.
Blow me
-Love,
Everyone
My bad. No more booze for lunch.
My comment should read:
The US patent system appears to be improving.
Let's hope that we'll get a Software Patent Reform Act of 2008.
Only if they hire you.
After all, I am strangely colored.
And to think, just a couple days ago they were announcing their 1000th member. Oh Network Time Protocol, how we love and hate you.
Oh, wait.
Is SMTP taken as a company name? I want to confuse geeks, too.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
AFAIK, most devices that aren't Blackberries or Good Tech devices *pull* their email, rather than having the messages pushed to them from the server. A small, but important difference.
And just for extra semantic fun, just how mobile does a device need to be to qualify as "mobile"? Does a laptop running Thunderbird violate NTP's patent if you unplug it?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
These screwballs tried to hack a POCSAG pager to dump data to the AT&T Safari laptop in the late eighties or early nineties. When they failed to accomplish anything useful (because they were incompetent) AT&T went with the SkyTel Link, which was a superior pre-existing product which actually worked.
Wireless networking carrying all network traffic was developed at the University of Hawaii and was a precursor of the ARPA internet with the transport layer being the "ether". Other wireless ARPA subnets (PRNET and SATNET) were integrated into the internet on August 27, 1976, with a message originating in a mobile station connected via packet radio ot the landline ARPANET.
Information about the mobile network station originating that message has been preserved here. The first inter-network spanning message was, of course, an e-mail.
The various packet and satnet Class A domains are defined back to at least RFC790 issued in 1981, The infamous TCP:99 "metagram relay" port doesn't seem to appear until RFC820 in 1986,
Also of interest is Vint Cerf's RFC773 of October 1980.
http://rfc.net/rfc0773.html
Now GET OFF MY LAWN, ya snotty little whippersnappers.
My university's co-op department sent out an e-mail advertising "RIM jobs". Apparently there were many RIM jobs, and we should apply for them.
"I expect that I look forward to the advent of truly international of private law more than do USAers."
There's no such thing. Laws are enforced at the barrel of a gun. Unless you somehow created an army of people with no national affiliation, you can't create such a body. And lacking such an army the only thing you can do is whine. Which a lot of countries seem content to do. But other than make you feel miserable, whining doesn't accomplish much.
The landscape has changed tremendously in the past 5 years. The KSR v Teleflex case alone, in which the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that simply combining previously existing elements in predictable ways does not deserve patent protection, should be enough to stop this now. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been responsible for not reigning in patent abuse in the past, has been so thoroughly horse-whipped by the Supremes that I'm sure this one will go nowhere. Too bad, however, that the Telco firms will still have to spend millions to make it all go away.
So......I have to shut down my NTP server now?
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Blow us
-Love,
Everyone
I seem to remember this. IIRC NTP won on a technicality, something like they got a ruling of infringement before RIM got the patents invalidated. So how are they back for more with the same patents?
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What? They got RIM to settle so they think they can extort the telco's? Someone needs to tell NTP that when it comes to courtroom extortion no one can beat a US telco. They freakin' invented, perfected and institutionalized the practice.
Oh, for the days when sig's didn't have to be cute...hey, wait a sec.
Nope, but I did find these: Steady Stream Hydrology, Fluid Transfer Products, and of course the Integrated Midwives Association of the Philippines. Just think of the confusion if all these companies got together and sued somebody.
PLEASE try and patent that one! I'd love to see what happened if it got through!
You go Networking Time Protocol!! All those NTP servers out there, working hard to keep time... it's about time you lawyered up!!
--Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com