RIM Strikes Back, Files Countersuit Against Visto 83
SilentOne writes "Research In Motion Ltd. launched an all-out assault on competitors yesterday, countersuing its latest legal nemesis and introducing software to pre-empt imminent launches by other challengers. The countersuit also gives RIM a chance to move the patent battle to a courtroom where it has a better chance of beating Visto. Visto filed suit against RIM on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, which reportedly favours patent holders in 92% of cases heard by the court. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-chief executive, said the company wants the trial moved to the Dallas area, where RIM's U.S. headquarters are located, for practical reasons.
Meanwhile, RIM is giving away a free software package, valued at US$3,000, to hook the e-mail accounts of small businesses and consumers up to BlackBerries instead of competitive devices from Palm and Microsoft."
Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY!! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Is Anyone Actually Surprised? (Score:1, Informative)
Say what you will, this just highlights (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind the technical merits of said device, which I have never owned or had to work with.
What's bad for America is good for China and India (Score:5, Insightful)
While American companies are mired in legalities, and restricted in their ability to produce and innovate (two things which any successful economy requires), Indian and Chinese companies will not be so restrained. As American companies are wasting resources on petty legal fights over patents, Chinese and Indian teams will actually be taking part in the development of the next generation of technology.
Many suggest that the trade ties between China and the US are enough to prevent China from saying to hell with the US. Such people are naive. They don't realize that the 2 billion people of China and India far eclipse the American market. Soon enough, the demand for technology in China and India themselves will be enough to fuel future innovation, regardless of what the American market demands.
It's likely that in the future, historians will discuss how the freedom of innovation in places like China and India, and the lack thereof in the US due to excessive legal barriers, directly led to the decline of the US in favor of India and China.
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen up, America. If you don't want to go the way of Europe and sink into mediocrity and irrelevance, you have two choices... either you loosen up your crazy draconian IP laws, or you declare all-out war on China and India. Sadly, the way things are going, I suspect it'll be the latter...
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:1)
Today's Fun Fact (Score:2)
After the second World War, in lieu of the more converntional wars reparations demanded of Germany by France, Britian and Russia such as cash repayments, industrial production curtailments, etc, America chose instead that its war reparations be paid for in the transferral of patents held by german holders, to
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:3, Insightful)
For many Indian and especially Chinese companies, US market may soon (5-10 years) be almost irrelevant, especially if there is a big difference in IP laws between the countries. If you're likely to lose more on court battles than you're likely to make on sales, then there's no point in coming to the market in the first place, no matter how big it may be. And Japan will likely be more than happy to concentrate on Asian market as well, if US market becomes too exp
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? Of course it will! It's just a question of when. Roman economy is currently irrelevant. Spanish economy is irrelevant. UK economy is irrelevant. US economy will be irrelevant. Let's hope it won't happen very soon though.
You see, most of that $10 trillion figure depend on most of world trade being in US$, and US foreign debt being $ as well. If that changes, and if it changes too fast, then there'll be trouble... And there will be change when
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:1)
Not a problem. (Score:1)
Right now, China is still playing technological catch-up with the rest of the world. China really doesn't need to bother with indigenous innovation today, since they can easily acquire superior technology from outside their borders. At the rate that their industry is advancing, however, they are quickly nearing parity
Re:What's bad for America is good for China and In (Score:1)
Real technology transfer has yet to really happen. Many companies know all about the flagrant disregard for intellectual property exhibited by China and they closely guard their secrets.
Furthermore, there is not yet the development of a market which can support the kind of research and development required to produce a company like Cisco or IBM, that takes years of experience and
Markets go both ways (Score:2)
Thats globalization for you, Mutually Assured Economic Destruction. Some interesting reading on this is in a great book called 'The Pentagons New Map', highly recommended no matter where on the political spectrum you fall.
It will take -decades-, if not longer, for these countries to create enough of an internal market for these gadgets and that is pl
So so wrong (Score:2)
Except the fact that the VAST majority of those 2 billion ppl are poor as shit and can't buy anything you have to sell. Numbers of people do not equate to a "large market". Numbers of people with money to spend is what qualifies as a "large market".
And when you measure like that, the US IS the largest and most well funded market for products in the world. By a long way.
Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:4, Interesting)
-full integration with Exchange/Lotus/groupwise. Any important action which I can do from outlook, I can do from my BB and everythign is mirrored and synchronized
--typically any mail sent to my email gets to the device less than 1-2s after it gets to outlook. deleting, marking as read, forwarding, replying etc, everythign you do to a message on the BB is mirrored in outlook an vice versa.
--calender is wirelessly sync'ed and you can accept requests, send out invitations etc.
--memos, tasks, contacts etc, etc are all wirelessly sync'ed as well. Entering any such data on the BB will automatically send it to outlook. Beleive me, this is VERY useful.
--the BB is efficient and uses A LOT less bandwidth than MS PPC handhelds.
--RIM's has infrastructure is very reliable.
--Security is very very important. The US government uses is extensively, and they even have a BB smart card reader.
--it can be administered remotely, have applications pushed to it, different IT policies enforced etc, pretty easily.
Basically, the handhelds themselves are pretty nice (though not exceptional), the whole package is unbeatable. No wonder the only way companies are trying to stop RIM is through the courts.
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2, Informative)
Blackberrys are great except for two major things that drive us crazy at my company:
1. RIM refuses to build IMAP functionality into Blackberry Enterprise Server. Most of our company's email users connect to a Linux IMAP server, but we have to provide an Exchange server just to accomodate the Blackberries, even if the users don't need a
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:1, Insightful)
discount parent comment (Score:2)
Re:discount parent comment (Score:1, Informative)
Integration with Exchange/AD is horrible. There are no LDAP lookups to AD, and the sum total of BB integration with Exchange is via a single mailbox. Hardly an "enterprise-class" product.
I can't wait until we start playing with the PPCs and get a real solution for mobile mailboxes.
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:1)
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2, Informative)
If your battery runs low the blackberry will disable wireless. Now thats great because I get extra life out of the device and can use all the PIM functions for a while without wireless. Now if you plug it into a charger guess what it doesnt do? It never re-enables the wireless, so if you're not paying attention and dont "enable wireless" you'll be wondering why you're not receiving any phone calls or emails.
The desktop s
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2)
Your outlook is probably running in the newer exchange cached mode. Originally Outlook was always online and connected to exchange, the cached mode essentially makes outlook offline and it checks for new mail every minute or so.
So you get more of a delay in cached mode, but the benefi
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2)
I think i'm in the wrong profession. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think i'm in the wrong profession. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think i'm in the wrong profession. (Score:2)
Well played my friend. :-)
Free software? (Score:2)
Re:Free software? (Score:2)
Re:Free software? (Score:2)
Re:Free software? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Valued at $3000". By who? How can they say something like this wiht a straight face?
Re:Free software? (Score:3, Informative)
RIM of course.
How can they say something like this wiht a straight face?
I see where you are going, but you would be wrong.
Actually this is what they typically charged customers for it previously. Its not some magical artificial suggested retail price that nobody ever actually paid... that they plucked out of their ass; people actually did pay around 3k for a modest Blackberry Enterprise Server package.
Re:Free software? (Score:2)
I just got a blackberry and the amount of open source software available for it is surprisingly low. We have to get coding. :)
"Valued at..." is a crock (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Valued at..." is a crock (Score:2)
Note that neither case results in the amount $3000 being a value that can reasonably be claimed for the item given away. The $3000 is just an arbitrary number that some marketing person pulled out of his or her nether r
Re:"Valued at..." is a crock (Score:1)
Or... 3. The cost to finish, package and market the product all with your own capital is greater than the profit margin the product would garner on the open market.
In this case, it's wiser to release the ideas into the public domain and allow others to contribute to the product's development. Of
It's not a crock (Score:3, Insightful)
Now what the MSRP for a piece of software (or, again, anything) is is it's value plus a profit margin that's determined by "what th
Deepak Chopra? (Score:3, Funny)
Must not be the same Deepak Chopra as this meditation [chopra.com] nut.
I hope.
V. RIM Strikes Back (Score:5, Funny)
I. The NTP Menace
II. Attack of the Lawsuits
III. Revenge of the USPTO
IV. A New Lawsuit
V. RIM Strikes Back
VI. Return of the Blackberries
Now available on DVD in classic and digitally re-mastered editions!
Re:V. RIM Strikes Back (Score:5, Funny)
Re:V. RIM Strikes Back (Score:2, Funny)
Filed a couunterSTRIKE? (Score:1)
Damn wallhackers. We'll get 'em next round, though.
Behold WareRIM! (Score:1)
Re:Behold WareRIM! (Score:2)
RIM going all psycho is not just to get revenge [well directed at someone else] but because they can't afford to lose again.
Frankly this makes me happy. I hate crackberry syndrome. It does change people, not always for the better.
More than once I would be interrupted during an interview to have some little dork read his email. Sure I'm not a rockstar so probably not 100% entertaining but during a Job interview when you ask a question, listen for at least
Re:Behold WareRIM! (Score:1)
The $3,000 software package (Score:2, Informative)
is barely mentioned in TFA. What they're referring to is BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 Express [blackberry.com].
Only a 1-User licence is provided for free, however.
RIM is obviously worried about Microsoft giving away push technology in Exchange Server 2003 SP2 [microsoft.com].
Part of me hopes RIM lose (Score:3, Interesting)
children playing with their Blackberries when they're supposed to be
paying attention. My opinion is that these "tools" far from aiding business
actually cause far more time to be wasted than anything else yet devised
(including the cellphone!) as insecure middle management constantly check
for emails from the boss they're currently brown nosing. It they couldn't
use them I genuinely believe the business enviroment would be a lot
healthier.
What is a blackberry? (Score:2)
I suppose it makes a fashion statement. That statement is apparantly, "Look at me, I can't understand how to use a touch screen keyboard, and I can't be expected not to lose the stylus anyway. I'm trendy!"
So there you have it. Blackberry: The Palm Pilot for the Duplo crowd.
Re:What is a blackberry? (Score:2)
I don't think that's how they work (Score:2)
Re:Part of me hopes RIM lose (Score:2, Insightful)
My opinion is that these "tools" far from aiding business actually cause far more time to be wasted
I guess you would object to people bringing in their laptops to meetings too. How about a writing pad, it can be used to doodle on drawn non-work related images ? I think you need to realize that not everybody thinks and works like you and you need to accept and work with the differences. Yes some people abuse blackberries, but these people would very easily find some other distraction to replace it if you
About time too. (Score:4, Interesting)
RIM Fights Back (Score:2)
Of course they are just like everyone else.. Suckers
Re:RIM Fights Back (Score:3, Insightful)
Please tell me you're not responsible for drawing up any company's business plan...
Re:RIM Fights Back (Score:1)
"You're not responsible for drawing up any company's business plan."
Re:RIM Fights Back (Score:1)
Hope the courts will see this for what it is (Score:1)