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Motorola Asks ITC To Ban BlackBerry Imports

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-the-tasty-blackberries-don't-worry dept.

alphadogg writes "Patent litigation between Motorola and Research In Motion is heating up, with Motorola filing a complaint with the US International Trade Commission. In the complaint, Motorola alleges that RIM engages in unfair trade practices by importing and selling products that infringe five Motorola patents. The patents cover technologies related to Wi-Fi access, application management, user interface, and power management, Motorola said. Motorola is asking the ITC to investigate RIM and bar the company from importing, marketing, and selling products in the US that use the technologies."

13 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Well, if you can't compete... by Obstin8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    then the only option is protectionism.

    1. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You're supposed to just say "first post" and not actually make some sensible argument. Jeez, what is /. turning to?!

    2. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by pete6677 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Within about 10 years or less, patent litigation will be the ONLY line of business left for former U.S. tech giants. All innovation will take place elsewhere, as it largely is already. You'll know this time is near once Microsoft loses their monopoly on the PC desktop, which they inevitably will.

    3. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by drej · · Score: 2, Funny

      Someone mod this 'prophetic'.

    4. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Someone mod this 'prophetic'.

      Prophetic? I disagree. I think he's only stating what's already happened to us. The process really began back in the sixties, and has been on an accelerating curve ever since. We just aren't feeling the full effects of it yet because we've kept up the fiction that we're a good place for foreign investment (although the cracks are showing). Fact is, the nation is still running on inertia. There's a Great Collapse coming ... I just don't know when. I really hope it's after I retire in peace to the island I plan to purchase after I win the lottery. Let all the stupid, shortsighted people here that truly believe that America doesn't need all those dirty machines and factories go to Hell in their own way. Ignorance is not bliss: it's the way to misery and poverty, and America is on that road.

      One of our Founders, Thomas Jefferson, early in his career believed that America would best be served by remaining a largely agrarian culture, with the few manufactured goods we needed being purchased abroad. He eventually realized that that was a mistake, that we needed industry in order to maintain our ideals, indeed to maintain our freedom. He always maintained a distrust of the corporate sector (very wise in retrospect) but ultimately understood that freedom was based upon independence, and that we could not be dependent upon other nations' good will if we wished to be free.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    5. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by couchslug · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The only way our labor will become competitive is after a collapse resets labor AND commodity costs.

      Americans cannot afford to work for Chinese wages unless we reset to conditions like those of China.
      Some things will have to go, and that means a willful and deliberate rollback of the benefits workers are used to having, a destruction of entitlements, and social conditions that coerce people to work for prevailing wages instead of getting government handouts.

      Competition means competing, it is required by inevitable and natural market forces, so position YOURSELF as best you can and Cthulhu take the hindmost. The post-WWII boom is over, the world learned how to make stuff, and America can't boast its way or shoot its way to the top of the heap. Americans are going to have to suck it up and get an old school work ethic, including willingness to suffer in return for money. Those old farts of the so-called Greatest Generation were hardened by hard times. We don't have hard time yet by comparison (note that our poor are fat as hogs and if they were any lazier they'd stop breathing), but they are coming.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    6. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by Josh04 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're just plain wrong if you think the poor are lazier than the rich in any meaningful way.

    7. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by brainfsck · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The United States continues to lead in nobel prizes and university-level education and research as well as these measures of innovation and technological achievement.

      I'm curious which metrics you used to come to your conclusion that "[a]ll innovation will take place elsewhere, as it largely is already."

    8. Re:Well, if you can't compete... by Z00L00K · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The US has wasted the last decades on not development but trying to protect and conserve what is. A shitload of money going into the work of lawyers while R&D is cutting costs.

      It's like racing - either you try to block the competition or you try to drive as fast as possible. Using lawyers and litigations is just trying to block the competition - but when you are in fourth row that only means that the leaders are leaving you behind.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  2. Americans. explain how this is 'free market'. by unity100 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    doesnt monopolizing entire national market through usage of patents and copyrights or cartel practice kinda defy the point of having one ?

    --
    Read radical news here
    1. Re:Americans. explain how this is 'free market'. by zwede · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've long had the theory that raw, uncontrolled, capitalism and communism end up the same: with a monopoly, no competition and no innovation. Only difference is with communism the state controls the monopoly, with raw capitalism the monopoly controls the state. Both rely on a submissive citizenry that can not be bothered to defend their freedom.

    2. Re:Americans. explain how this is 'free market'. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your theory is correct with respect to current U.S. policy. However, read Ayn Rand's "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal" to understand why what we have in the U.S. is not "capitalism" nor a free market.

      In a truly capitalist society, the government stays out of business except for enforcing contracts and copyrights. When set up correctly, business has no reason to lobby the state for favors - the state has no power to grant them. In true capitalism, business compete based on their ability to create and deliver products and services, not their ability to lobby for state-enforced monopolies.

      http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264270394&sr=8-1

  3. Cellphone Tournament? by smd75 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Winner of Apple V Nokia faces the winner of Motorola V RIM. Winner takes all.

    --
    Im a troll because I disagree with you.