Hopes Rise for RIM

sbowles writes "U.S. District Court has set Feb 24th as the next date for a hearing to consider a possible injunction against Research in Motion. Despite this, RIM shares are rising on news that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), under pressure from crackberry-addicted Congressmen, may be moving to invalidate NTP's patents. As a contingency, RIM has announced that they have a software workaround that will allow service to continue uninterrupted."

Good move for the wrong reasons.

[grub]

news that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), under pressure from crackberry-addicted Congressmen, may be moving to invalidate NTP's patents.

While I agree that NTP's case is bogus, unhappy Congressmen are the wrong reason for invalidating the patents in question: it hoists them above the rules everyone else has to live under.
I think most would agree that far more people are disillusioned about the entire patent process. Apparently, though, nothing will come of that until some government-types are inconvenienced by the system.

If they have a software workaround

[winkydink]

then why not implment it and end the whole mess?

Re:If they have a software workaround

[thaerin]

Either that or they don't truly know how it'll work in the real world with hundreds of thousands of users. Sure, working in a controlled environment is fine and dandy to test things, but surely they can't be positive it'll work across the board.

I wish RIM would fight

[fuzzy12345]

Not that this will happen, but...

If RIM were to say, on a Monday morning, "Due to patent litigation in the US, all Blackberry service will be turned off immediately, indefinitely" we'd see patent reform by Wednesday.

Just as "hard cases make bad law," sometimes there's a confluence of defendant and public (uh, congresional) interest which cause a certain set of facts to be uniquely positioned as a spur to reform. I don't want exclusions for federal workers, I want this case to be used as a blunt instrument to get congress to address the problem. UNFORTUNATELY, what would be best for everyone (IMHO) isn't what's best for RIM, and I doubt they'd take one for the team.

Re:If they have a software workaround

[ihaddsl]

I'm guessing the 'workaround' is inferior in some respect. otherwise, they would have switched already instead of playing chicken with NTP.

Notice how they don't say much about what the workaround is (other than to say it requires a software update on the blackberry handhelds which they'll preload on new blackberry's if required)

something's rotten

Re:Good move for the wrong reasons.

[terrymr]

The judge refused to stay proceedings until the outcome of the patent office review. This is the reale nonsense of the case ... RIM may have to pay billions (or maybe many millions) to stay in business only to have the patent office invalidate the patents after judgment has already been entered against RIM.

Re:Good move for the wrong reasons.

[mavenguy]

I don't know what behid the scenes political pressure has been applied (and I doubt that anyting new in the last few weeks has had any effect), but there has been a reexamination (actually two that have been merged); anyone can see what has been going on by checking out 90/006492 in the public PAIR system [uspto.gov].

Briefly, there have been two non-final rejections, the last one mailed on November 30, 2005, and all the claims under reexamination (I haven't checked if there are other claims not included that would remain if the rejections are sustained) have been rejected. The only reason the last action was not made final was that additional rejections were made based on prior art made of record between the two rejections.

I don't think an recent publicity about a shutdown of service after the appeal from the District Court was shot down has had any effect on the reexam procedings; I haven't followed this case, however, and don't know what outside influence was brought to bear on the PTO to order the rexams.

Re:Good move for the wrong reasons.

[LWATCDR]

"unhappy Congressmen are the wrong reason for invalidating the patents in question:"
That is actually how the system is supposed to work.
Congressmen are supposed to represent the people in their district. When something happens to make the people unhappy the congress person from that area are supposed to do something about it.
To be honest this is the first patent case that affects a large number of people directly. If you notice the halt of service will not effect Federal Blackberries so the users in congress will not be shut down. Maybe they don't know that :)