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Patents Handhelds

Another NTP Patent Invalidated 104

Posted by CowboyNeal from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
darkmeridian writes "Bloomberg reports that the PTO has granted a non-final rejection of a third NTP patent asserted against Research in Motion in the Blackberry litigation. Five patents have been asserted against RIM, and only one of the three rejected has been found to be valid and infringed. Yet this development helps RIM as it seeks to avoid an injunction against operation of the Blackberry network pending appeal."
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Another NTP Patent Invalidated More

Another NTP Patent Invalidated

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  • Because so many feds are using blackberry, they won't shutdown their network anyway. They have plans to switch, so it does not matter how many silly patents are valid or not.

    As European, i still don't get what is so new to the Blackbarry "called" push technology. We have text messaging for years (called SMS here) and now that it transmits eMail, they patent it.

    It just shows that software patents suck by definition.

    • Re:They wont shutdown anyway (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      IAAPL (i'm actually a patent lawyer). anyway, while this is certainly good news for RIM, yay! go RIM, the patent has not been invalidated. as the article points out, this is one step in the process of the PTO rereviewing the NTP patents. NTP will have an opportunity to respond to these and potentially overcome these rejections.

    • Actually rather different (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We have text messaging for years (called SMS here) and now that it transmits eMail, they patent it.

      SMS is basically a good old-fashioned text pager that works entirely on the phone network.
      BlackBerry is more like an e-mail client that works on the phone network.

      I don't know if either deserves a patent, but SMS and BlackBerry are really quite distinct.
      • SMS is more than just sending short text messages. It can be used to transfer data (like ringtones etc.). Not that you want to nowadays with GPRS (or maybe even UMTS).

        Which just raises the question again: what is special about a blackberry? Even my old Ericcson T39 has a buildin email client (transfers via GRPS or a WAP gateway).

    • I take it that NTP is not the same thing as "Network Time Protocol".

      Because if ever there were a software paradigm worthy of patenting, NTP [ietf.org] would be it.

  • It's a race between RIM's last defences against a shutdown verses the remaining patents of NTP being blown away. Stay tuned while we take this commercial break...

  • Not much sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:06PM (#14280223)
    Research in Motion was the leader in a lot of this patent litigation.

    http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958550.html [com.com]

    I remember them suing over everything, Good technology, handspring with the treo, etc etc.

    In this case, NTP is clearly just a patent litigation machine which is worse, but everyone's been using these patents to muscle around in the marketplace...

    • No tears for either patent troll (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:24PM (#14280280) Journal
      Here's a gem from the tail of TFA:
      If a company loses a patent, it can no longer license it to other companies that make products. NTP's primary business is licensing patents that it owns. It makes no products.

      In other words, they're parasuits.

    • In this case, NTP is clearly just a patent litigation machine which is worse

      Very few people combine both the entrepreneurial and the inventors' talent. "Patent litigation machines" allow both kinds to prosper independently. And give us the fruits of their innovation...

      Supermarkets are not growing the foods, that they sell, either. Does not make them "evil"... Growing apples and selling them are entirely different vocations.

      • Your analogy does not relate to the situation. A more apt analogy would be the apple growers having to pay comapany XYZ because if they don't they will be sued for using someone else's idea.

        The patent system as it is is completely flawed. We would be much better off with no patent system. If someone makes a product and someone else copies that product then whoever supports their product the best and adds the most innovation will win and the other company will die off. Kind of like natural selection.

        • Go catch polio. (Score:1, Interesting)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          We would be much better off with no patent system.

          No, you would likely have died young because no private enterprise would have had the financial incentive to develop vaccines to protect you from childhood diseases.

          If someone makes a product and someone else copies that product then whoever supports their product the best and adds the most innovation will win and the other company will die off.

          Do you understand how much work goes into the hundreds of failed chemicals before the one safe and effect

          • No, you would likely have died young because no private enterprise would have had the financial incentive to develop vaccines to protect you from childhood diseases.

            You might try some basic research before bringing up polio as an example. It was developed by a medical school lab and never patented.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • tepples wrote: Or do you have some plan to compensate drug companies for research and development other than a temporary right to exclude third parties from producing the chemical?

              squiggleslash wrote: As you say, nobody could ever invent an alternative to the patent system that rewards people for inventing and innovating useful things without forcing anyone who invents the same thing independently to pay royalties or leave the business altogether. It's simply impossible.

              I didn't say that such an alte

      • What's wrong? *No value add* (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lenski ( 96498 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @02:06PM (#14280447)
        Retailers, grocery stores provide a clear value add (a.k.a. service): They *make the products accessible* to a broader marketplace of customers with shipping, inventory, marketing, establishment of quality name, et cetera et cetera.

        Now compare that to NTP. They provide *no value add*. No work, no service, no accessibility, no publishing. If on the other hand, they make the ideas accessible to those who would like to license them, *that* would be a value add.

        As far as I can tell, NTP simply held some patents (silently) until they saw a company that had done its own research and actually did the work to build a profitable business. *Then* they jumped on RIM's "infringement" of "their intellectual property".

        I consider this to be the equivalent of a company like NTP staking out a legal but private claim for a piece of land in the middle of a public place, unmarked. Someone comes along and sets up a fruit stand in what they think, incorrectly, is legal open place. After investing effort in building their business, NTP comes along and says that the fruit-stand builders owe them 3 years in back rent.

        The issues here are twins: 1) NTP didn't say anything to anybody about "their" ideas. 2) They waited until RIM had invested *big money* in their infrastructure, not knowing about the virtual landmine.

        Classically, patents existed to enable the patent-holders to receive a return on their research investment and to get the ideas out into the world to serve as bases for conteinued economic development. NTP's behavior is exemplary of an economically abuse of the patent system.

        It's worth noting that patent language is so impenetrable, and the numbers of patents so massive, that it (the patent system as it stands today) probably can no longer serve its original purpose. As a developer, how do verify that

        a) my code doesn't infringe one of hundreds of thousands of software patents

        b) If I discover that some element of my work happens to be patented by someone else, can I license it for a price that doesn't eliminate the remaining shreds of margin that I still have?

        • Now compare that to NTP. They provide *no value add*. No work, no service, no accessibility, no publishing. If on the other hand, they make the ideas accessible to those who would like to license them, *that* would be a value add.

          First of all, I absolutely reject this criteria. One must be entitled to enjoy her property, even if he does not do anything (perceived by others as useful) with it.

          But you are wrong. NTP and entities like it certainly make our lives better by paying inventors for their ideas.

          • One must be entitled to enjoy her property, even if he does not do anything (perceived by others as useful) with it.

            Patents aren't intended to be "property". They're intended to be an economic incentive to promote progress in arts and sciences. Any property-like features are a side-effect of the current implementation of patents. Such windfall benefits for the patent holder should not take priority over the utility of patents in benefiting the overall economy.

            In particular, snatching up a bunch of cheap

            • An intelligent inventor would do a patent search up front to avoid the "hard work of independently re-inventing." Even "a bunch of cheap obscure patent, sitting around" unimplemented have value to society because they force other later inventors to come up with new ideas. This concept known as "designing around" other patents is a key feature of the patent system.
              • Yes, but how do you do the patent search? Typically the patents are phrased in such obscure but broad language that even a professional patent search is unlikely to turn everything up. Plus, paradoxically doing such a search actually increases your liability if you should overlook something. As for designing around things, that might work if so many patents on obvious things weren't granted. Inventors shouldn't have to design around things that are intuitive in their field.
              • An intelligent inventor would do a patent search up front to avoid the "hard work of independently re-inventing.

                Nobody searches software patents for ideas, especially high-level fuzzy ideas like "wireless e-mail". Do you honestly think somebody is going to be sitting around saying: "Gee, I'd love to read e-mail with a mobile device. I can't imagine how to do that, though. Oh, I know, I'll search for a solution at the USPTO! .... Well I'll be damned, it turns out you can do it with wireless radio! I would

          • First of all, I absolutely reject this criteria. One must be entitled to enjoy her property, even if he does not do anything (perceived by others as useful) with it.

            Define "enjoy": I assume that you mean either "making money" from the idea, having bought it from an inventer, or simply sitting on it. For now, let's assume you mean "making money"...

            This is simply, as they say, factually wrong. NTP first contacted RIM in 2000, a year after the service was introduced. RIM chose to fight, and lost...

            "Fact

            • Here is why clear and unambiguous language will not happen in patents...

              Once you reduce the idea to clear language, the obviousness
              of most patents will be strikingly obvious. Most patents will
              no longer pass the laugh test, and would be rejected.

              It sounded like you were saying that the delivery of messages
              over a wireless link was non-obvious. Not sure if you meant
              that or the reverse. To me, once you have the concept of delivering
              messages down, choosing another medium to send it over seems the
              height of obv
              • I meant to say that in 1980, the end-to-end concepts for delivering what is now commonly known as email was not nearly so complete as it was in 1997. In 1980 (or perhaps earlier), many of the inventions involved in routing, switching and the other tools in the now well-known Internet toolkit were not yet well-known, and establishing competent networking would have been a real invention, to say nothing of wireless delivery.

                As of 1997, *everybody* with any experience in communications understood both the con
          • Reject that idea as you wish, but IP is not a real thing. Property is a physical asset that can be seen, bought, and traded. That the US is allowing patents on concept is ridiculous; ideas were never supposed to be patentable, only the implementation. Copyright is for ideas, such as music, literature, or art.

            Paying inventors is fine and dandy. For one thing, it would mean that someone actually invented something. However, NTP invented nothing; they have no product, no prototype, nothing of value.

            NTP di
            • NTP did exactly what RAMBUS did. Both are dirty, unethical, and reprehensible business practices.

              Unfortunately, it's not yet illegal. While they can be invalidated (and in the case of NTP's patents that appears to be what is happeneing), it usually comes to late to help companies bankrupted by these practices.

              A copyright is for an idea.

              Wrong. Copyright is for a particular *expression* of an idea. For example, following your criteria there could only ever be one book about C programming while the
              • I'm with you completely on that. I didn't purposefully imply that I thought a generic idea should be able to be copyrighted, just a specific expression, as you said. I don't even like that lyrics can be copyrighted, but only the specific rendition of the song as a whole. That way another artist could cover/remix the song, and it would be fine.

            • Reject that idea as you wish, but IP is not a real thing. Property is a physical asset that can be seen, bought, and traded.

              No software, then, can be owned, thus invalidating all licenses -- including (heavens!) GPL.

              That the US is allowing patents on concept is ridiculous; ideas were never supposed to be patentable, only the implementation.

              This is a rather foolish attempt to set the scope. Why could not the two inventors of telephone settle their claims by simply getting patents for, say, black phones

              • No, it would not bar software licenses; that would be copyright, not patent. The GPL uses copyright on a specific implementation of software. All software licenses that I know about would still be valid, as they all use copyright.

                The telephone design would still be patentable. Just because you connect a different wire to it, this does not change the design of the device at all. I could connect a steel wire to a telephone right now, and it would function. Also, color would not effect the design of the d
              • You seem to have misunderstood some of the IP law debate. IANAL, but let me just point out:
                1. The poster you replied to isn't arguing that IP should be abolished -- just that it's wrong to think of it in the same terms as physical "property." It's ok to own physical property and sit on it for as long as you like. But it's bad for society if one can do this with ideas.
                2. The GP believes that NTP's patents are invalid even under today's system. They're either too obvious, or too vague.
                3. Your phone example is no
        • If you substitute "Handspring" for "RIM" and "RIM" for "NTP", your post is equally accurate. RIM sued Handspring because they had a patent on tiny keyboards. Really.

          There's some poetic justice in RIM losing a ton of money because somebody else had an obvious patent that RIM was infringing.

  • Why don't they just invalidate them all? It would send a message to patent holders that patents are to protect legitimate business activity and filling frivolous patents for stuff you never plan to build is not tolerated. Then the world might actually respect the patent system.

    • Yes and how will you prove that they never had plan to build anything? There is such a thing as licensing you know.

      In a perfect world it would work like you said. But not everyone with a brain has deep pockets. And it would be very hard to demonstrate that the intention to build something wasn't there.

      • Re:Invalidate them all (Score:5, Informative)

        by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @02:14PM (#14280475) Homepage Journal

        There is such a thing as licensing you know.

        Problem is that current patent law sees no problem with sitting on a patent and refusing to entertain offers to license. Title 35, United States Code, section 271(d) [uspto.gov]. Though laches [wikipedia.org] is potentially an effective defense against patent trolls, it has become much too hard to prove laches nowadays.

        • I think the argument that is frequently made against a compulsory licensing regime is that such a system may reduce the incentive to invent. When a patent holder refuses to license a patent it creates a huge incentive to design around the patent at issue.

          • I think the argument that is frequently made against a compulsory licensing regime is that such a system may reduce the incentive to invent. When a patent holder refuses to license a patent it creates a huge incentive to design around the patent at issue.

            And when it is proved impossible or grossly uneconomic to design around the patent, then the existence and threat of enforcement of the patent reduces the incentive to invent things that build upon the invention described in the patent.

            • A later inventor still has an incentive to build on top of a patented product that is not available for licensing because you may develop a derivative invention that induces the original patentee to cross-license the patents. Even if you are not yet selling your derivative invention there is a potential that the original patentee will sue you for infringement under the assumption that the new invention could not possibly have been developed without using the original invention. However, no rational person
    • What an absurd comment. Invention per se is a perfrectly legitimate activity; there are many research companies who contribute greatly to the greater good by doing research and then filing patents with the long term goal of being purchased for their results. Half of bioteh R&D is accomplished using this model. Universities surely have no particular interest in engaging in manufacture, but often have their patent portfolios add significantly to the funds they have available.

      If you void patents on the gr

  • Competition is superior to force (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:12PM (#14280238) Homepage Journal
    These patent procedures are really impossible to understand. There are so many confusing patents that no one, not even the PTO, can wade through them all. Is it fraudulent for companies to try to take advantage of the legal use of force that patents offer?

    There's no solution to this government atrocity except complete dismantling. Before I was a believer in anarchocapitalism, I thought the best solution was to file a patent and immediately pay a tax on sales, a tax that increments every year until the company releases the rights. I see taxation as theft, so I don't support that process anymore.

    My solution? Obfuscation. There is nothing that truly needs a patent (not even prescription drug research once you consider the high ost of regulations). Items that are revolutionary can be protected, temporarily, by hiding the process. The more a competitor wants to knock off your product, the more they'll need to invest to figure it out.

    Let's forget even protecting secrets. Thousands of competing patents cover competitive products, but the patented features don't sell the product. What sells it? Ease of use, marketing, quality, safety and support. The patented portion supports very little in terms of sales.

    Some Korean bootlegger released a $50 iPod knockoff already. It is a piece of junk. Apple has little to fear because their name sells product based on people's past experiences.

    Just like long term quality content gets your website into a high position in the search engines, the same is true of products and services. Use competitiveness instead of force to earn your future.
    • These patent procedures are really impossible to understand.

      THere are a lot of things in this world that are not easy to understand. quantum electrodynamics, reinnman geometry, organic chemistry, tort law, female psychology. Just because you haven't mastered an understanding of something doesn't mean it should be discarded or it isn't very useful.

      Items that are revolutionary can be protected, temporarily, by hiding the process.

      It is amazing how bad an understanding of history people have. What you are des
      • Your model would completely eliminate any economic progress. Large companies would be free to copy an idea, use it in their products and use their market position to crush any new ideas. I cannot imagine a more disasterous idea.

        That's just wrong.

        Millions of new products come out annually without patents. The consumers pick the winners. Patents don't make people innovate, they prevent innovation and enhancement.

        • Millions of new products come out annually without patents.

          Millions of trivial products. Important products are almost always protected by patents.

          Patents don't make people innovate, they prevent innovation and enhancement.

          No, they reward innovation and enhancement. And they make it worthwhile for companies to fund the research needed to develop those inventions.

          Look at what happened just this week with the Lipitor patents and Pfizer, and the impact that ruling had on the entire pharamcuetical industry.
        • Err....poor old Netscape would have something different to say about that. Consumers can pick the winners, but the process is very susceptible to abuse of power, in the MS v Netscape case monopoly power, which ensures the odds are stacked unfavorably against the incumbent.

          An economic system unprottected by patents, is akin to one unprottected from monopoly abuse. Both laws are meant to prevent players with enough resources (be them financial or a monopoly grip on a precursor industry - such as desktop compu
          • yet another example of why laws that are created to protect the economic process of innovation are necessary.

            Not at all. The reason that I.E. overwhelmed Netscape so quickly is because it was free for Windows owners, and all CDs of Win95 shipped after IE was written had IE included on them. Rather than take the time to pay for and download (with dial-up, remember) Netscape, people went with cheap or used what was already there.

            Patents and copyrights were irrelevant to the issue. Or, by your argument, Linux
      • Your model would completely eliminate any economic progress. Large companies would be free to copy an idea, use it in their products and use their market position to crush any new ideas. I cannot imagine a more disasterous idea.

        No privately held intellectual property? It worked for the Soviet Union; it can work for us! Oh the glorious future that awaits us when we- hey wait a sec.. nevermind.

    • What you've said is not entirely true. In many instances, yes, the better product sells. But lets say tomorrow I create a newer, better version of an iPod that could blow it out of the water, and try to market it and create it myself. Who's going to win here? Apple. Because they have the current marketplace, money, and other resources needed to squash my idea, reverse engineer it, and have a better version out, which pushes me out of business. However, if I've patented my new iPod clone, I can prevent Appl
    • These patent procedures are really impossible to understand.

      And that's why a lot of women don't like American football. (No offense to those ladies who don't use that excuse ;)

      Before I was a believer in anarchocapitalism,

      I have a carbon monoxide leak of cataclysmic proportions in my home. I'm sure we see eye to eye on lots of issues.

    • I don't see any problem with an increasing fee for patents. After all, that's not theft, it's a service contract "We'll proptect your patent if you keep paying us enough money!". That may end up hurting smaller inventors, though. Not to say the current fees don't. Perhaps assigning fees based on the holder's income or, if it's a corporation, their revenue (and obviously make it illegal to just assign all of them to the CEO and hand them over to the company when they've found someone to sue). Holding thousan
    • I worked at GE Plastics for a while. You can imagine this company did not lose money.

      Talking to the engineers and managers, I learned how they did it: The GEP edge is in development. A customer brings a requirement, specific properties of the polymer that they need. Melting temp, elasticity, viscosity, tensile strength, colour, density, whatever it may be. GEP then produces materials with those properties quicker than any other producer in the world can, and in whatever quantity needed.

      During the year or mo
  • To quote their article [economist.com]:
    Distressed BlackBerry users argue that too many of the world's workers rely on the device for the service to be shut down. But many of their jobs depend on the principle at stake in this case -- that the courts should protect intellectual property because it rewards inventors by conferring a real title to an intangible asset. Business requires confidence that intellectual property will be respected and infringers brought to justice, regardless of whether the litigant is using the patent or not. Only with that security will firms patent and license their inventions, thus allowing others to use their ideas.

  • Work-around for obvious patents (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Greeneland ( 598616 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:46PM (#14280382)
    It seems to me you could get around the RIM situation by doing the following:

    1. find the oldest net-based email-solution you can and use the source without any modifications whatsoever. (better yet use the binary if possible)
    2. build a layer on top of it to interact with what is now a local app. It should be possible to use specific screen-grabbing, techniques, etc., that have been in existence for ages to avoid yet more patents.
    3. wait for NTP to explain how you infringe their patent using source code that was written back in the dark-ages of the net.

    Of course I have not read the actual patent (why should I when it will only give me a headache and someone else here will sum it up eventually), but it should be critical until the patent system changes to find ways to get a JURY to understand what is the difference between one technology and another. If all the patent does is take e-mail and "do it over the cell network", then it should be obvious to everybody (except a JURY it seems) that the application is the SAME (and by actually using an old application you can perhaps make your point), but SOMETHING ELSE is different. The cellular wireless network. And therefore, unless the patent covers the invention of a cellular wireless network, they should perhaps have the book thrown at them for various reasons I will not mention.
    • Ah but you forget that they have a patent called "a process for getting around the RIM situation"

      There are two steps described in the patent:

      1. find the oldest net-based email-solution you can and use the source without any modifications whatsoever. (better yet use the binary if possible)
      2. build a layer on top of it to interact with what is now a local app. It should be possible to use specific screen-grabbing, techniques, etc., that have been in existence for ages to avoid yet more patents.
    • A combination patent, uh, patents a combination of pre-existing products in a new, unobvious combination that has utility. Now, I am not sure if this is what NTP has on the Blackberry, but that would preclude someone from doing what you are suggesting.
      • The issue of unobviousness is key in that the email application created to perhaps run over 10-base2 ethernet and novell ipx, then later over packet-radio, then later gets deployed on a system running 10-base-t, then later deployed on another system running 100-base-t then later deployed on another system running 1000-base-t, also deployed over cellular wireless is later found to be infringing when:

        1. it has not changed
        2. it is operating exactly as it had been designed, to exchange email over a network.
  • NTP's primary business is licensing patents that it owns. It makes no products.

    This by itself should mean automatic invalidation. The purpose of patents is to encourage progress - what part of patent parking acheives this goal again please?

  • Slashdot is to patents what Fox News is to Facts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by back_pages ( 600753 ) <back_pages&cox,net> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @03:34PM (#14280794) Journal
    The summary of this article is blatantly factually incorrect. Anyone with any knowledge of the patent system knows the difference between "invalidated" and "non-final rejection from the USPTO".

    Ever wonder why it's so rare that anybody with any influence over the patent system pays any attention to the rants and raves of Slashdot, free software, open source, etc.? It's because these groups very rarely, if ever, have a clue what they're talking about.

    Before you reply to flame me, think about what the word "marginalized" really means. By refusing or not bothering to become educated on the issue of patents, a huge majority of Slashdot's readship marginalizes itself and renders its thoughts and opinions irrelevant.

    "Non-final rejection" equals "invalidated"? That's a joke, right? Surely the article is a troll. Nobody with any self respect would seriously submit that as a story unless they were pulling a prank on Slashdot's editors.

    • Re:Slashdot is to patents what Fox News is to Fact (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And here's a followup from someone else who actually knows the patent system from the inside-NTP can now amend the claims being reexamined and present additional arguments as to why the amended claims are now allowable over the rejection. If those claims are allowed they will now carry an extremely strong presumption of validity (actually, almost unbreakable) because of the reexamination. If those claims are still being infringed by RIM, guess what? RIM is totally screwed in court, and will have little r
    • Read the article summary I wrote. I didn't get to write the title the editors stuck on the article.
    • The article summary is correct, despite what the parent says. He rails against why Slashdot sucks, but he does so in typical Slashdot style: without reading the article or the article summary. He read the title, then wrote a knee-jerk diatribe.
      • The article summary is correct, despite what the parent says. He rails against why Slashdot sucks, but he does so in typical Slashdot style: without reading the article or the article summary. He read the title, then wrote a knee-jerk diatribe.

        Ok, you called me on it and I'm man enough to admit my mistakes. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that the person submitting an article also suggests the article title. I apologize if this isn't the case.

        However, I was critical of the reporting on p

    • I guess that's why, after nearly 5 years of articles related to patents, there's still people thinking that patents / trademarks / copyrights are the same thing.

      And, NO, I will not explain it again.

  • Not Really (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thebdj ( 768618 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @03:41PM (#14280826) Journal
    Yet this development helps RIM as it seeks to avoid an injunction against operation of the Blackberry network pending appeal.

    The judge in the case seems pretty reluctant to listen to RIM when it comes to the re-examinations going on before the PTO. The judge might still institute an injunction and that could force RIM to settle. This is particularly bad because if all the patents are invalidated then there would be no reason to have an injunction or a settlement and would cost RIM a lot of money. I think that if the judge does order the injunction RIM will go ahead and continue to appeal the process and prevent the injunction as long as possible.

    The judge also refused to await for a decision in the MercExchange v. eBay case currently before SCOTUS that pertains to injunctions. RIM is still challenging to SCOTUS that they are not infringing because their routers are maintained in Canada and they are a Canadian company. Their argument may have some merit and it could just stop the whole case in its tracks. RIM has and will keep trying to avoid the injunction as long as possible, until the PTO cases go final or until SCOTUS makes a ruling in eBay case or decide to hear their case on jurisdiction.

  • Report wildly overstates the relevance . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by werdna ( 39029 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @06:17PM (#14281652) Journal
    The issuance of non-final rejections in a patent case before the PTO is all but routine -- indeed, it is rare that the PTO does not issue at least one non-final rejection of one or more claims in a patent application or reexamined patent. Please take the time to learn what a non-final rejection is and means. To suggest that mailing of an office action constitutes "invalidation" of a patent is to manifest supreme ignorance of the patent process.

  • Do you smell that? It's the smell of US innovation rotting after a napalm attack by big business. Do we really think that innovation and technology can be maintained by big corporations? Old houses of innovation are forced by profit concerns to be very focused as compared to 50 years ago. Where's GE, Xerox, Tektronix, HP, Westinghouse, and Bell Labs for instance? Either dead, packaging other companies' innovations in their boxes, or limiting their work to a myopic focus. Those are just some examples,

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