"Judge delays BlackBerry US shutdown"

At this point there is a judgement against RIM that no court has set aside. In fact I think it unlikely that one will. Remember appeals are about the legal process, not a factual finding which the jury already rendered. (RIM shoudl never have lied in front of the jury, always a bad thing to do)

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico
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What I haven't understood is why someone with pockets hasn't stepped in, offered NTP some sort of deal and jump all over RIM's market. RIM has no legitimate claim over the technology at this point. NTP's claim may eventually be voided (I'm like you and doubt it) but clearly at this point RIM has no exclusivity to the technology. A Verizon or Sprint or your favorite could jump all over this. They have national networks and the pockets to do the marketing. There is nothing special about a blackberry at this point. 10% less a month and a lot of company's might be will to take a look.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

Not even a full line into your post and you have the facts WRONG!! A jury decided that RIM violated. This is the problem with these types of discussions, most of the people in them do not know the facts of the case. CLassic example above.

that RIM violated patents that

Then RIM would laready be paying. They lost.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

That idea while totally undemocratic might have a chance since it so favors the large corp over the rest of us. I think the biggest nightmare a lot of corps have is that some Edison will come along invent sonething in his basement and put them out of business. with expidited reviews for the deep pockets, Edison could effecytively be cut off at that pateint office by a quick reading corperate lawyer(s).

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

Again squeeze the little guy on a shoe string and leave plenty of room for deep pockets. Recall Jobs sold a VW and Woz a HP calculator to get the Apple 1 running. Sometime great innovation doesn't come from the well healed. $3000 seriousily could have been a show stopper.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

You are so off on the facts of this case I am amazed. Have you ever actually read anything besides Op-Ed pieces about this case? I don't believe you have gotten a single relevant fact right in this entire thread. I could be worng, but I don't think so. Feel free to point me to the post (google groups) you've made where you are sure you have gotten a fact in the case correct.

Again based on your theory loser pays, RIM needs to be in their check book as we type, they lost going on 4 years ago.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

They were? can you back this up with anything or is this just your opinion? The court record suggests otherwise.

Funny you have actually described RIM's position and actions before NTP got hold of them. They wee the ones with weak to no claims of patients going after copy cats. It was this action that brought them to NTP's attention.

Funny how you praise after they did exactly what you accuse NTP of doing.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

WRONG again, they clearly have a case, a jury agreed with NTP, and appeals all the way to the Supreme Court have failed to reverse the jury's decission nor has any appeal resulted in the trail judge being over ruled. That suggests in point of fact a very strong case. You really should read up on this, and not Op-Ed pieces on Slashdot or whatever.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

Sometimes, I'm sure it would be - but really, what's the point in patenting _anything_ if you can't afford the patent process. You have to have some reasonable hope of profiting from it.

Reply to
Derek Broughton

Not necessarily -- precedence would still apply, not the date of approval.

Reply to
John Navas
[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

Nonsense.

More nonsense. Read the actual case history, not USA Today.

RIM lost in court, including appeals all the way to the Supreme Court.

Reply to
John Navas

Guilty as charged (pun intentional). Looking at the shelf, I at least

9 UPS boxes on the shelf, all labeled "dead battery". There's probably another 10 hidden under things or at home. There's a fairly large pile of batteries waiting to go to the recycler. However, all it not lost. I found a new Back UPS ES 350 and installed it on my office desktop. Of course the power failures stopped immediately thereafter.

Lousy idea. In most foreign governments, it's called "greasing the palm". Nothing happens without the appropriate bribes, errr... user fees. Every company I've seen that has such an "expedite fee" has a substantial incentive to drag their feet in the hope that most users will be sufficiently frustrated to pay the expedite fee. After all, the expedite fee is pure profit. It costs nothing to produce. I suspect the USPTO would be no different.

Maybe the USPTO can structure it like domain registrations and have the patent holders pay an annual fee to defray the expenses of challenges, litigation, court costs, etc.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I personally see this as no different from the kind of service classes that work well in other areas; e.g., USPS, where I see no evidence that Express Mail has resulted in degraded First Class service -- if anything, the opposite is true.

Reply to
John Navas

It's worse than that. People patent things that don't work. I've been following the history of one such patent (details on request as I don't wanna diversion here). The company has been pitching investors and burning their dollers for about 8 years. The ploy is to patent a useful function, but with a totally non-functional implimentation. When someone actually figures out how to perform the useful function with technology that works, the attorneys pounce on them with claims of infringement. Never mind that it doesn't work. In the myoptic eyes of the law, it's still infringement because the first company had the "idea" first.

Well, to be totally fair, it's impossible to obtain an airtight patent position today. The USPTO issues patents for just about anything with the intent of letting the courts settle any infringments. The only way to protect a technology is to own a collection of patents, which cover as many aspects as possible. That's why there are patent pools. Unfortunately, that results in such situations as RIM vs NTP where the correct answer would be partial infringement, but where the law does not allow fractional infringements.

Agreed. Incidentally, there's also the Visto versus Microsoft infringement case for wireless email synchronization.

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No country ever sued its way to greatness.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Just so there's no misinterpretation here, the various appeals are for court proceedural errors, not for revisiting or retrying the case. The appeals court did not rule on the merits of the case. They only check if proper court proceedures were followed, evidence properly considered, every i was dotted, every t was crossed, and that nothing was withheld from the court. The appeals court did find some problems with some of the terminology used in the complaint, but ruled that the

2002 decision was valid. The appeal did not make it to the Supremes. They refused to hear the case.

There's some good detail on the chronology of the case at:

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Agreed. I like to simplify things. To what degree simplification is acceptable largely depends on your tolerance to complexity. Mine is very low. KISS etc.

That would be Electronic Services Associates and later Telefind. Thomas Campana Jr was an engineer for them from 1985 to 1991. He died in 2004.

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of applicable patents listed).

The first sign of a problem was in 2001, when the current owner of the patents, NTP, sued for infringement. NTP was founded in 1992. So, NTP sat around and watched RIM grow the business, make it work, sell the concept, build up the bank balance, and 11 years later, pounced. How commendable of them to wait so long.

Personally, I think that ethics are severely lacking for all involved. RIM for getting Congress involved. The USPTO for violations of their own proceedures (revisiting a patent re-examination after a jury decision). NTP gets my award for unreasonable licensing fees and damage claims. I dunno about the courts either. The key demonstration of the TeckNow 1987 prior art was "fabricated" by RIM by substitution of later software. That was necessary because the phone system would no longer accept 300 baud modem connections and the new software was required for 1200/2400 baud operation. But the distinction was lost on the technically clueless judge and jury.

There are no good guys in this mess.

Incidentally, you may wanna read a very detetailed chronology of the companies at:

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

What you have to understand is that a jury decision is far from final. There will be more appeals based on the invalidation of the patents. RIM now has solid grounds for an appeal, something they lacked prior to the invalidation of the patents.

You need to learn how the court system works. A jury decision is simply one step in the long road to a final settlement.

Reply to
SMS

Just so there's no misinterpretation here, findings of fact by a jury cannot (normally) be appealed, only rulings and conclusions of law.

Thus it did make it to the Supreme Court. That has the same effect as a negative ruling.

Reply to
John Navas
[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

What you have to understand is the jury system. Findings of fact by a jury cannot (normally) be appealed, only rulings and conclusions of law.

Not true. RIM has already lost on appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

Reply to
John Navas

I have no idea how the USPTO operates. However, I a bit about the FCC. Out of about 360 employees of the wireless telecomm burro (WTB), about 120 are lawyers and 30 are engineers. 30 years ago, the ratio was the other way around. Government employment of technical people is decreasing.

This is from 2001:

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"We need lawyers to understand engineering," Powell says.

Hopefully, the USPTO is more clueful (but I doubt it).

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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