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
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.
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.
No more innovation! Law suits are the way of the future!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
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