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RIM - The Whole Story 262

Posted by Zonk from the better-than-pirates-of-silicon-valley dept.
khendron writes "The Globe and Mail has published an article titled Patently Absurd, detailing the whole history of the RIM vs. NTP wireless war. It is a blow by blow account of how a dispute that could have been settled for a few million dollars is now 'a billion-dollar dagger hanging over RIM.' The article reads like a fairy-tale of egos, legal blunders, and patent stupidity."
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RIM - The Whole Story More

RIM - The Whole Story

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  • Patent stupidity? (Score:3, Funny)

    by matt4077 ( 581118 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:30PM (#14593849) Homepage
    no pun inteded, I guess.

  • Stupidity... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:32PM (#14593861) Journal
    Never underestimate the stupidity of bean-counters, even more so that they run most companies nowadays.

    • Re:Stupidity... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geoff lane ( 93738 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @03:10PM (#14594233)
      You left the "i" out of "ruin".

    • Re:Stupidity... (Score:3, Informative)

      by bird ( 12361 )
      Indeed. But if you read the article, you would learn that it wasn't the beaners that fucked this one up-- it was the founder of RIM, a technical guy.
    • I said this once in a post a while back when this started going down hill. I was a procurement manager for a large telecom and personally handled the RIM agreement. There was only one way the agreement was going to happen, RIM's way or the highway. This is no joke. The lawyers for the telecom company I worked for then called them "Canadian Cowboys". RIM was flying high (and still is) and they think they are invincible. If this article is correct in that RIM could have settled this for a few million wi

  • Glad this wasn't settled out of court (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rick and Roll ( 672077 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:36PM (#14593878)
    This is a great example of the kind of problems our patent system causes. I hope that this gets more and more press. I'm tired of being alone when it comes to my outrage at software patents.

    While I'm not naive enough to think that the problem will get fixed any time soon, at least this will add another straw, and eventaully enough straws will be added to break the camel's back.

    Oh, and by the way, NTP are bastards. I don't care about their cute little story. Nobody should be able to do a half-assed job and get hundreds of millions.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @05:16PM (#14594929)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Did you actually read the article? Looks to me like RIM is getting what it deserves.

  • Which side am I supposed to be on? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by db32 ( 862117 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:36PM (#14593879) Journal
    Ok...so...basically as pointed out in any number of the previous RIM/NTP stories, RIM started as a bunch of patent litigating bastards. Now...NTP attacks them with an equally moronic patent and suddenly we are all supposed to gather the horde, fetch the pitchforks and charge to RIM's defense because patents are bad. So...once this is over...and someone attacks NTP the same way RIM went on the attack, followed by NTP attacking, are we supposed to support NTP during their defense? This also brings up similar questions with SCO and friends...are we supposed to support SCO when they are attacked by the same litigious bastard types that they were being? I for one would like to see RIM get torn to pieces by this silly patent, partially as karma, partially as an example to the world how stupid this patent nonsense is getting, and partially becuase I just don't really like crackberries.

    • Fun with crackberryheads... (Score:5, Funny)

      by IAAP ( 937607 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:52PM (#14593942)
      ...I just don't really like crackberries.

      I got this from a waitress friend of mine...

      A lot of times, people come into the restaruant she works in and while she's trying to take their order and ask them things like: "What kind of dressing do you want, what do you want to drink, etc...", they'll be looking at their crackberry and findling with the butons. Of course, they're asking her to repeat what she said and thy always get pissed when their order isn't what they thought they asked for. So, to make their rudness fun, while she's (other waitresses are doing this, too) taking their order, she'll interject a "meow", as in a cat's meow. The contest amoung the waitresses is to see how many "meows" they can say to the crackberryheads before they say "excuse me?". It's really fun to watch!

    • Ok...so...basically as pointed out in any number of the previous RIM/NTP stories, RIM started as a bunch of patent litigating bastards.

      Oh gee, it must be true than.

      RIM has a real product which they have carefully designed, successfully marketed, and valued by millions of consumers. How does that make them "litigating bastards"? NTP sued them. RIM probably should have just thrown NTP a few million bucks and settled the case early on. The fact that they were too self-righteous to do so is a symptom of stu

      • How does that make them "litigating bastards"?

        Is it short memory day around here? Before the NTP/RIM case, RIM was busy suing Handspring [geek.com]. As the grandparent said, they started as a bunch of litigating bastards. They tried to do pretty much the same thing to Handspring that NTP is now doing to them - crush them with patent litigation. Last time around it was about having a QWERTY keyboard on a portable. Now it's about push email.

        • Trying to protect a keyboard design is hardly "crushing with litigation". Nor is trying to grab a few million bucks in exchange for some old patents, which is what NTP originally tried to do.

          Slashdotters see evil conspiracies every time somebody sues somebody else over IP. I'm no fan of IP laws, which now seem designed to stifle the innovation they were originally meant to promote. But as long as these laws are in place, dealing with them is just a part of doing business. Companies that enforce their pate

      • Maybe I am missing something, or maybe I didn't read close enough. But I am pretty sure RIM started with the lawsuits long before this NTP nonsense came up. Going after portable devices for "Hey! you stole our idea of making a small keyboard!" I'm not saying that their only business is lawsuits as is the case with NTP. I just think there is some karma involved here in the tendancy to use stupid and obvious patents to compete rather than coming up with something truely innovative. I don't even really ha
        • I won't give you a hard time for not RingTFA, since I'm pretty sloppy too. But stop and think for a second: how could anybody sue NTP? They're an IP company with no actual products!

  • Fairy-tale of egos, legal blunders, and patent... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You mean "Snow White, 6 Lawyers, and The One-Click Dwarf?"

    I loved that one as a kid.

  • The only winners... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:48PM (#14593929) Homepage
    ...are the legal rep's screwing both sides for all they can

    • Re:The only winners... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 )
      And still Mr. Lazaridis and RIM didn't settle. Friends and colleagues say Mr. Lazaridis is uncompromising by nature. "Mike is the kind of guy who doesn't make business compromises. You know how people plead guilty, even when they know they're innocent, just to get a reduced sentence -- Mike wouldn't do that," says Bill Frezza, who worked with RIM on prototype wireless devices in the early 1990s while he worked at Ericsson Canada Ltd. Yes, it's the lawyers' fault. The businessmen that 1. want to receive a
      • Lawyers are tools. Dangerous tools to be sure, but still only tools. They do what they're told, and in this case Lazaridis simply did not do what was in the best interests of himself and his company. Maybe his is in the "right", but if NTP puts him out of business in order to make a few people ridiculously rich no real purpose will be served by his stubbornness. But as uncompromising as you want in the development of your products, but when it comes to protecting your investment and the livelihoods of your
    • The lawyers love the current system. They make money filing patents and if one goes to the courts its a jackpot! Uncle Sam also likes the patent system since it generates a nice pile of money with no risk.

      So, if the patent system is going to be reviewed who'll be doing the reviewing? A few "experts" will be called in. They'll be USPTO staff and lawyers. Niether of these want the system to change (unless it is to make it even better [from their perspective]; hint: not everyone else's perspective).

      The same go

  • The Key thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nattt ( 568106 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:50PM (#14593935)
    The Key thing is that's NTP's patent was a worthless piece of paper until RIM did the hard work and made a product that worked, and that NTP could try and scrounge some cash from.

    Patent Trolling is not clever, it's a cancer in the patent system, just like submarine patents and software patents.

  • wireless Email, I'm so confused! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SQLz ( 564901 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @01:52PM (#14593943) Homepage Journal

    I'm still confused about how someone could patent wireless email. Basically, you have email technology (POP,SMTP) and you have wireless data transport networks designed for general purpose use, IEEE, GSM, whatever. How is it considered an invention to simply use the network for what it was designed to do? I mean, what about wireless web browsing? Wireless DNS resolution? Wirless SSH/Telnet? Or Email over ATM? Email over ISDN? Email over DSL?

    The real inventor of 'wireless email' is the original inventor of email plus the original inventor of a general purpose wireless networking protocol. Doesn't the patent office think that when a network is invented to move bytes, the original inventor envisioned email or any TCP/IP service to run on it? If the logic I am reading is true, wouldn't it technically be possible to patent any TCP/IP service over 'insert layer 1/layer2 technology here'?

    • Re:wireless Email, I'm so confused! (Score:4, Informative)

      by codegen ( 103601 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:20PM (#14594047) Journal
      While you are partially right in that the two are an obvious combination, there is a bit
      more to RIM than simply using pop over wireless. The cost of constant connections
      to check you mail would drain the battery in short order. It closer to what happens
      in SMS. When the server receives new email for you, it actively sends out a message
      through the wireless network to your device which is most likely in standby mode
      (like a cellular phone). That makes your device notify you that you have email. It
      is not a TCP/IP connection.

      I'm glossing over many of the details. I went to a RIM presentation at a conference 1.5
      years ago, and the details are a bit fuzzy. I don't agree with software patents in the
      first place, so a pox on both houses. But there is a bit more happening than tcp over
      general wireless network.
      • So they have an xbiff technology.....amazing!

        • Re:wireless Email, I'm so confused! (Score:4, Informative)

          by codegen ( 103601 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:31PM (#14594085) Journal
          Not really, xbiff is just a process that does periodic checker and changes
          its icon. That is exactly what they don't do. The server sends out a message
          through the network to a device that is on standby, just like a cell system
          sends out a message to a phone that is on standby. The innovation is in
          the details of the network handling, which is not a simple TCP/IP connection
          over wireless.
          • MSN Messenger receives a message from the server whenever there is a new Hotmail message waiting, and I've seen Jabber/XMPP things that do the same. I don't see NTP going after Microsoft for infringement - after all, I can use MSN Messenger over GPRS.
          • So basically it's wakeonlan... I see that as prior art... if it is not prior art they could make it with a firmware update.

            1 receive wakeonlan packet
            2 run script to check for new mail
            3 notify new user of mail.

      • How does this not apply to SMS?

        I, and most other cellular customers in the US, have an email address where email messages are automatically translated into text messages. Send me a message at (my phone number)@vtext.com, and I get a wireless notification that a message has arrived, without my phone needing to maintain a constant connection. Seems like exactly what the Blackberry does, right?
    • O'Reilly has a useful summary of the patents in question (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8782?wlg=yes [oreillynet.com]).

      Excerpt of description of NTP's patents from Judgement in 2004 from the Richmond Federal Appeal court : "A message originating in an electronic mail system may be transmitted not only by wireline but also via RF, in which case it is received by the user and stored on his or her mobile RF receiver. The user can view the message on the RF receiver and, at some later point, connect the RF receiver to a fix
    • I'm going to patent the process of bringing food to your mouth when you eat something. I can't patent food or eating, just the in between movement part.

  • The obvious part here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:02PM (#14593981) Homepage Journal
    seems to me that RIM failed to check for prior art. In any case - If they hadn't put up claiming a patent and at the same time going harsh on possible competition - would NTP have been hard on claiming their patent then?

    As I see it - there are some reasons for patents today:

    • Filing a patent to earn money from it's licenses
    • Filing a patent to avoid anybody else to claim the patent and require you to pay.
    • Filing a patent to kill off competition.
    In any case - the real winners are the lawyers.

    One must always question - is it really worth the effort to file a patent. If the patent is refused - is the filing still valid as "prior art" and therefore sufficient to be able to avoid others to claim a patent and then kick you out of the market?

    • One must always question - is it really worth the effort to file a patent. If the patent is refused - is the filing still valid as "prior art" and therefore sufficient to be able to avoid others to claim a patent and then kick you out of the market?

      The majority of patents are not worth the cost of preparing and filing the application. The minority of patents are worth modest fortunes, and sometimes more. The problem is determining the difference between the former and the latter. It's educated guesswo
    • It's not clear to me that RIM failed to check for prior art. Since they originated in Canada they may well have neglected to check for US patents, which I think is understandable. However, having been involved with the patent search process myself I can tell you that:

      a) Patents to not have to be disclosed when filed - there is a period during which the details of the patent can be kept "private". TFA doesn't give specific filing times, but the timelines presented mean that the two could very well have be

  • conclusion (Score:3, Informative)

    by oliderid ( 710055 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:05PM (#14593996) Journal
    Brief summary:
    Rim used to be the bastard. NTP is the bastard. Lawyers changed brilliant inventors into agressive beasts.

    Conclusion:
    the US patent system is bad for the US economy and bad for your ego.
    • The problem is NOT the patent concept it is the application of the concept by the inept Patent Office. They do half-assed reviews and grant bad patents because 1) they don't have the skills needed to make the "prior art" determination and 2) they are underfunded and under political pressure to grant patents quickly both of which lead to patent battles such as this one. I think a good patent attorney could patent breathing the way things work now.

      • Re:conclusion (Score:3, Insightful)

        by BobTheLawyer ( 692026 )
        I think it's worse than that. US patents are only supposed to be granted for inventions which are not obvious. The US patent office doesn't seem to make the slightest attempt to police this rule. The NTP patent, and most of the other controversial patents one hears about seem, to me, to fail this test.

  • This behavior is pretty common (Score:4, Informative)

    by confusion ( 14388 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:09PM (#14594010) Homepage
    I can tell you I've been at several places and NONE of them have really concerned themselves with infringing on others' patents. The common rebuttal is that "we have patents too, and I'm sure we can find them [other company] infringing on ours somehow. Hence, we can "strike a deal" if a problem ever comes up.

    Jerry
    http://www.networkstrike.com/ [networkstrike.com]
    • The main problem with this approach is with companies like NTP, who never had a product and never, ever, intended to have one. They can't possibly infringe on somebody's patents because they don't really work on anything.
      • No.

        Trolls like NTP are not the worst.

        The real problem is with companies who have a less efficient and more expensive product, but buy off possibly competing patent technology and keep it in their safes until doomsday.

        Oil companies own patents on battery and hybrid vehicle technologies and keep them in their safes, chemical companies keep patents on long life tires and do not develop them so that they can sell inferior product, so on so fourth.

        These are what really stiffles innovation and should be dealt wit

  • IBM's Devices in 80's (Score:3, Informative)

    by raftpeople ( 844215 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:16PM (#14594030)
    In the 80's and 90's IBM service reps ran around with something they called a "brick" which was a wireless device that they used to communicate with the main office, wouldn't that be prior art for RIM and NTP?

    More importantly, if RIM was going after all of these other companies, then it was hardly "novel", right?

    Neither company deserves a patent in this case (which appears to be the case with about 98% of all software patents).
    • And it was from....RIM. I have been in what used to be a mainframe shop since the mid 90's and the techs carried the early blackberries. I saw the RIM logo on the back of these. They switched from the brick like ones to the more PDA like ones a while back.

  • job loss (Score:5, Funny)

    by DirtyJ ( 576100 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:17PM (#14594035)
    After reading that blow by blow summary, I worry that many Research in Motion employees will have to say goodbye to their RIM jobs.

  • Shoot 'em both (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:22PM (#14594049) Homepage Journal

    What a thoroughly ugly situation.

    On one side we have a former innovator that decided to become a patent troll. I suppose if not for RIM, those patents would have just quietly turned to dust.

    On the other, we have an actual innovator that produced a real product. It then learned that he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. They sure thought patent lawsuits were a good idea until they found themselves on the wrong end of one.

    The big winners are the lawyers on both sides. The undeserving loosers are everyone who depends on this technology. Fortunatly, there are a few other ways to keep up with e-mail while mobile now.

    • Re:Shoot 'em both (Score:2, Informative)

      by aliscool ( 597862 ) *
      Microsoft will end up the winner. Outlook mobile access on Windows mobile version 5. We just got a quote from our vendor to replace our 156 Blackberries with IPAQ's using OMA. We'll only exercise this option if forced to. But MS would be the clear winner.
    • They're the ones responsible for this whole mess, by granting obvious patents in the first place!

      • How about we meet half way, shoot all three. I do agree that the USPTO's long running dereliction of duty has contributed to this and other problems as well.

  • Karma (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who could have scripted it any better? Company seeking to cash in on stupid patent is hoist by its own petard. The resulting patent dispute threatens communications between lawmakers who rely on the stupid company with the stupid patent, so they pass a law exempting themselves from the laws they created. Can they really outlaw their own karma? Stay tuned to find out!

  • Long article... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Professor_UNIX ( 867045 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:27PM (#14594065)
    I got about 20% of the way through and lost interest in this even though I've seriously been wondering what this whole Blackberry lawsuit is about. How can someone have a patent on something like "wireless e-mail"? Tons of phones can read e-mail and even my Motorola pager can send and receive e-mail. If NTP sat on this submarine patent just waiting for people to start using their technology without sending out cease and desist orders then their patent should be invalidated.

    Personally I feel companies that buy and sell patents as if they're some kind of property are a disgrace to everything the patent and trademark system was founded to uphold. They're not using the patents to innovate, they're just using the patents to extort money out of other companies. NTP should have all its patents stripped because it's quite clear they're nothing but a patent squatter.

    • How can someone have a patent on something like "wireless e-mail"?

      Because:

      A patent may not be obtained . . . if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. 35 U.S.C. 103(a) [cornell.edu] (emphasis added).

      Wireless + email sounds obvious, but don't forget hindsight bias: what seems obvious now ha

  • Doesn't look good for Research in Motion, (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @02:31PM (#14594087)
    but you know what they say: "Fill it to the RIM ... with Grim!"
  • Patent Wars - this sounds great to me. RIM starts patent lawsuits against some firms, then NTP starts a patent lawsuit against RIM. They can all go to hell, as far as I am concerned. I really don't like blackberry by the way, can't stand it. I know people who worked at RIM, and their experiences were pretty terrible. It's not a great 'inventors' company anymore. It stopped being an inventors company when it started its first patent lawsuit. They just got back what they deserved, no less. Of-course s

  • That RIM -sees- NTP as a patent troll? And then goes on to say how they were specifically set up just to wait for someone to step on the land mine? NTP -is- a bunch of patent trolls!

    This is about everything that's wrong with the US patent system. -Actually putting into successful production- the object of your patent, or selling it entirely, should be one of the major criterion for it remaining valid. Otherwise, you are just a patent troll, making the real inventors walk through your minefield, and then w

    • Actually putting into successful production- the object of your patent, or selling it entirely, should be one of the major criterion for it remaining valid.

      So, if you invent something, shop it around, show it to a potential partner, then they kick you in the ass, show you the door, and put it into production without a license - your patent is invalid?
  • "In 1992, Mr. Campana and Mr. Stout agreed to form NTP. The company was never about making things or selling things. It was about protecting potentially valuable ideas, some of which dealt with sending messages to wireless devices. And for nearly a decade, Mr. Campana's patents lay dormant, just waiting for RIM to produce the BlackBerry."

    Protecting from what? Protecting from someone who independently envisions and creates the idea? That's called following through with an idea. That's called innovation. Some
  • "A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."

  • fake demo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by belmolis ( 702863 ) <billposer.alum@mit@edu> on Sunday January 29, 2006 @07:40PM (#14595584) Homepage

    I'm curious about the demo that pissed off the trial judge. Does anybody know exactly what they did? What I wonder is whether it was truly a fraud or whether they used more recent software for innocuous reasons (e.g. they didn't have all of the original environment) and the demo was actually valid as evidence that the old technology worked?

  • Behind it all, Real Human Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by layer3switch ( 783864 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @07:52PM (#14595628)
    "He was not the greatest businessman in the world," Mr. Campana Sr. concedes. "Even when his business was going broke his employees never missed a day's pay. He went home without paying himself."

    Mean while RIM in Nov. of 2002, to meet the finacial quota, layoffs followed;
    http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/article/824 [techdirt.com]

    To be more balanced, here is the timeline on RIM vs NTP stories/posts;
    http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/search?quer y=RIM&topic=&author= [techdirt.com]

    I am not defending NTP or RIM, however this seems awfully a lot like history being repeated.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth [wikipedia.org] (Father of TV)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstron g [wikipedia.org] (Father of FM radio)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci [wikipedia.org] (Father of Telephone)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole [wikipedia.org] (Father of Digital Age)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diesel [wikipedia.org] (Father of Internal Combustion Engine)

    All died with tregic end, without entitlement or recognition or compensation for their life's work while they were alive, only to be stolen and profited by thieves and corrupt hands of greed.

    This may sound naive and to some "slashdotters," idiotic, but I value true human story in history more so than the profit margin or success of marketing and public opinion. The truth is, Mr. Stout and Campana are robbed from their rightful entitlement as Mr. Stout successfully demonstrated his idea through practical usage and only to be failed as business venture later on. This does not mean that Mr. Lazaridis didn't have any valuable input for this technology. However as patent is to protect the legitimacy of an idea, our legal system should validate that entitlement, not manipulate and craft to falsify the technical validity of original idea of the inventor.

    I don't personally care for how many lines of code are there, regardless if it's 16 million lines or 16 billion lines to make BlackBerry work flawlessly. This patent isn't about who has how many lines of code or how much work has been put in or how much money it made or how important it is on fight against "terrorist." It's about the innovative idea and technology.

    Other point is that often people are too quick to judge that patent itself is wrong, however without patent, non-profit driven, non-corporate endorced, average inventors and innovators of technology become faceless, only to be digged up later to be found in history book as many Open Source developers and programmers may face later.

    Or are we all that naive that one day, giant corporations and investers will dig up the holder of the original idea their proprietary software/technology benefited from in oder to share the profit and entitlement? Will FOSS and GPL ever have enough backbone or teeth to enforce its ideal and fight legal battles against billion dollar corporations'?

    What if Farnsworth became billionaire with his invention, what change could we have seen in today's TV broadcasting? What if Armstrong could have made his FM radio available to millions, what different sound could we hear over the radio today? What if Meucci and not Bell profitted from telephone, what could have happen for today's telecommuncation industry? What if Boole's idea was taken seriously and valued as later Claude Elwood Shannon, nearly 70 years later, found it to be, what could we have accomplished in today's computing industry? What if Rudolf Diesel was alive and prospected as Ford, could we have seen cars running on vegetable oil mor
    • The thing is, Sarnoff knew what Farnsworth was doing, and both were Americans.

      RIM is Canadian, and NTP is American. Perhaps it's a bad move on RIM's part for doing well in the US, but in theory the two countries' patents kind of knock each other out, right?

      Besides, I had more than a couple of friends who had done the nascent version of it before 1991: hooking modems up to a couple of computers that monitored servers and paged them text msgs when things happened. So RIM (and NTP) centralized the modem part?

      W

  • So, let me get this straight. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by faedle ( 114018 ) on Sunday January 29, 2006 @08:22PM (#14595712) Homepage Journal
    Guy invents the technology, can't really do much with it because it seems that there are other bits of technology that need to be invented before his idea can work. (NTP)

    RIM, who basically invented the same technology much later when there is a much more robust wireless platform and CPU to deal with this sort of thing, invents the technology and then starts suing competitors because "we invented it first."

    NTP digs a few dusty patents out of a drawer and says, "no, dipshit, we did."

    Meanwhile, at this moment in time, there does not appear to be anything "unique" about RIM's technology, and it appears to be "obvious" from the perspective of 2006. Heck, VeriChat, a AIM/Yahoo/MSN chat client for the Palm appears to work essentially the same way.

    Sounds like RIM is getting a karma job. They would have been in the right up until the point they started suing other companies. That made RIM a "patent troll" in my book.

    But, yeah. Only the lawyers are gonna win on this one.
  • It really does make my blood boil when one company holds the other up for ransom.

    ...problem is, sometimes these lawsuits are for good reasons and protect serious investments and thousands of employees.

    It almost seems like this particular lawsuit is really loopy - a company that doesn't produce, doesn't intend to produce, and has no-one employed but lawyer types - sues a company that's independently thought up the stuff and made it happen.

    The human cost is what scares me. We need lawsuits sometimes,

  • Invalid patents (Score:3, Informative)

    by cdn-programmer ( 468978 ) <terr@terraIIIlogic.net minus threevowels> on Sunday January 29, 2006 @10:45PM (#14596160)
    This is just so F8ing stupid. I was in Dallas in 1985 and I dumped printouts in Alaska from Sun Oil's office (I had the routing codes wrong). This was on the IBM mainframe system.

    Over 5 years before Lynes United Services in Calgary (who I worked for at the time) sent wireless messages. We didn't call it an "email" at the time but we did send messages. The company was working on oil field monitoring.

    We had systems working back then.

    In addition I personally used the Fidonet system here in Calgary and it had wireless packet radio and we did send messages back and forth - that was the 1985 time frame.

    How much F8ing prior art do we need?

    The PHONE COMPANY commonly ran wireless communcations on their ATM system because they have had wireless links in place for DECADES

    ------------

    All this illustrates is that lawyers and juries and Judges do not make good engineers. What we have here is totally f8ing obvious!

    Huge amounts of the telecomunications industry were doing wireless transmissions in many different ways. That email caught on and ran on existing technologies does not make it innovative in any way.

    Arrgghhhh!

  • The RIM / Waterloo mentality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Monday January 30, 2006 @12:03AM (#14596397)
    I live and work here in Waterloo, which is home to RIM. I know the mentality of the academics from the university, which is where RIM and other (not as major) tech companies have sprung from in the area.

    The academics here keep talking about one example with fondness: the case of Qualcomm, where some smart PhDs developed some wonderful intellectual property (in their case cell phone communication protocols) and patented it. From then on they basically do no work, and collect royalties from anyone who uses the CDMA technology. This is what they hope to achieve, to strike it rich in tech.

    This is what Waterloo people seem to aspire to: striking it rich with some intellectual property patent, then milking the world for royalties. It wouldn't surprise you to learn that this is also one of the most popular places in North America that Microsoft recruits from. This place is young; the university is very new, the industries around it are new. And there is a mentality here, where academics expect to get rich easily by riding the patent wave.

    RIM tried to do the same thing. They are basically a one trick pony, and besides the blackberry they have nothing going for them.

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