Blackberry Injunction Postponed 166
Astin writes "The PTO has rejected the last of the NTP patents against Research in Motion. On top of this, Judge Spencer has decided that Blackberry service won't be shut down today, but he will issue a decision on the injunction 'as soon as reasonably possible.' RIM CEO Jim Balsillie just said on CNBC that it's 'quite possible' that NTP won't see any settlement from RIM at all now."
Re:No patents but still infringing (Score:2, Informative)
Debatable (Score:3, Informative)
Let's take a look at this, because I think that I have a very different take on software patents than you do.
The earliest patent number I see here [wikipedia.org] is 5,438,611 [uspto.gov].
That patent was granted August 1, 1995, and the application filed May 23, 1994.
Ricochet [markshapiro.com] was already a commercial product in 1994. So, even ignoring the fact that I don't think that there's any benefit in granting patents on this stuff, the "infrastructure" certainly *was* in place. This was not an idea that nobody could or was coming up with.
He tried to bring it to market. He had a deal almost done with IBM, even demonstrated it at trade shows. His company was liquidated after the IBM deal fell threw, but was left with the patent portfolio.
"Almost done", huh?
He didn't sell it to them. IBM decided that they didn't want it. Unless you were involved in the negotiations *on IBM's side*, I don't see how you can have any idea how close they were. As it turns out, given how well Ricochet did, IBM probably was making a reasonable choice.
Several years later, RIM came on the scene and developed a workable system based on his technology.
And this is relevant to IBM how? How do you claim it is "based on his technology"? Are you claiming that RIM would not have had the 'revolutionary' idea of a wireless email device sans this guy, and that they proceeded to steal his idea?
What this guy did, if it had value (since I sure didn't see it) would have been in the device's design itself. The idea was neither groundbreaking nor unexpected.
He offered a license for $4 million.
Suppose you design, build, market, and make successful a cool gadget. Why should you hand $4M to every guy that walks up and demands money? Maybe he wanted to make a similar product in the same timeframe, okay, but he didn't.
Furthermore, at $100K a year (which, I think, is a darn good salary), and even ignoring inflation, what is being demanded is 40 years -- an entire working lifetime -- of salary. Even had RIM directly run out of one of his demos, said "Let's steal this idea" (and I don't have evidence that they didn't, but I doubt that you have evidence that they did), you're talking about nothing other than making a wireless computer access email. Does that take *forty years* of work to come up with this design?
RIM didn't even bother to respond, because they were too busy driving competitors out of the market using their own patents.
That may be true. I'm not familiar with RIM's IP background, and I'd be more than happy to see RIM not able to go after people with their patents either.
After RIM repeatedly blew him off, he got pissed and sued.
He demanded $4M, and RIM didn't bite. Okay.
RIM's lawyers were caught falsifying evidence. They still wouldn't pay the licensing. He started raising his price.
RIM's lawyers apparently put some sort of newer software on an '87 device. I have no further information on it. It may be that the outdated software was no longer available, and they just used the current version -- even though the original client could have performed the same tasks. It may have been that email couldn't be sent at *all* with that version. I don't have any knowledge about the specifics, and I doubt that you do either.
However, this is still breaking away from my point, which is that I don't think that there should be patents on this kind of thing at all. It is quite possible that RIM's lawyers conduct
Re:patent squatting (Score:3, Informative)
This is utter hogwash, particularly in the area of software, where independent invention is commonplace. Inventions don't cease to exist simply because someone fails to patent them. And while the possibility of patenting an invention may provide an additional incentive, it is hardly the sole necessary incentive to invention. It's not like the software industry went nowhere before an activist judge or two decided to legislate software patents into existence.