Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Asks Court To Block RIM Products For Violating Patent Agreement
itwbennett writes "The ITworld article reads: 'Nokia has asked a California court to enforce an arbitration award that would prevent Research In Motion from selling products with wireless LAN capabilities until the companies can agree on patent royalty rates. Nokia and RIM both declined to comment on Nokia's request, a copy of which was obtained by IDG News Service, but such a filing is typically made after two parties settle a dispute through arbitration but one party does not follow through on the agreement.'"
Also from the article: "The patents in question are U.S. patents 5,479,476, which covers user-adjustable modes for phones; 5,845,219, which covers call alert during silent mode; 6,049,796, which covers real-time search on a personal digital assistant; 6,055,439, which covers a cellphone user interface; 6,253,075, which covers call rejection; and 6,427,078, which covers a small, handheld workstation."
These patents are round-corner-grade stupid.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
These shouldn't have patents in the first place! They'd patent the wheel if they could.
Patent # 6,742,087: "Oxidative process for exchange of atmosphere across a membrane."
You all owe me everything you've ever earned.
This patent thing is getting to the silly point. The original idea was that by making some ideas owned by certain parties, you would force others to innovate around them. But that doesn't really apply when we're talking about a standard (Wi-Fi) on a standard type of device (PDA).
At that point, we're just holding ourselves back.
...fighting over a comb
They have a patent on one mobile workstation and want to use it to own all possible mobile workstations (that is, all smartphones)
Android will surely be next.
So is the point here just to funnel what little future these companies have into their lawyers pockets?
If you are circling the drain spending all your income on lawsuits seems unwise.
This really sounds like a case of one beggar suing another beggar over the leftover scraps of already consumed rats. You know a company is almost on its last legs when it resorts to suing another company also in significant financial trouble. RIM hasn't posted a profit in the previous 3 quarters, while Nokia hasn't posted a profit in well over one year.
If Nokia needs assistance in helping them balance their books, maybe they should start by exiting the US market, since they make significantly more money in the European and Asian markets.
Patent wars are increasingly a sign that the ideas fountain is drying up. Exactly like water wars...fight over old or weak patents, because we are not expecting to get many new ones.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You know you are in dire straights (Nokia) when they are anticipating competition from RIM.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I don't know. Maybe this is what we should ask our courts and congresscritters to decide?
I cannot help but wonder how much all these insane lawsuits cost us customers for no real benefit whatsoever, beside lining the pockets of members of the legal profession.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
No more innovation! Law suits are the way of the future!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Too late:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html
It's not a patent as we'd think of them, but just a registration that says "you filed these papers on this date". They're never examined and have no presumption of patentability. Unlike examination systems, it actually really is a literal rubber stamp.
oh right you can't
legal tip when the guys on the other side of the table are nicknamed MOFO and Nazgul RUN NOW!!
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
RIM is a dying, easy to beat company... If they win, they set a precedent...
"It's not that I don't understand what your going through. Its that I just don't care"
Title match tonight, RIM vs. Nokia.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That seems to be a major problem these days. They are no longer producing anything and making others pay for something which happened long time ago.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possess the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." ThomasJefferson