Tuesday the court sided with NTP against Research in Motion for patent infringement. There are 5 disputed patents here and they cover the use of wireless Radio Frequency in email systems.
Now at first glance, this patent seems to cover my wireless access point which is a stop on the way to my email server from my laptop and covers email on your cell-phone too. I am not very clear about how the whole patent systems works, but it seems there are one too many glitches in this system. To allow the registration of this patent itself demonstrates the inadequacy. There have been past discussions on Slashdot especially over some ridiculous patents like this one. I don’t think the system is encouraging innovation any more.
The positive side is, that RIM does not have to stop marketing the Berry in the United States just yet. Their appeal still has to heard. However, this is bad news in general for Univ. of Waterloo, which has very close ties with RIM. The founders are University alumni. Also, the patents will be reexamined.
It almost seems cynical to add this here, but SCO are now countersuing RedHat citing “dissapointment” and “previous discussions”. Suse meanwhile has sided with RedHat, the German Linux Distributor has always taken a hardline againts SCO since the allegations earlier in March.
Frankly, I am not sure what the Tech. Industry is shaping up to be. The truth is having a strong legal team really helps, lawsuits might just shape up to be a cute revenue stream for those holding overreaching patents that make frivolous claims of IP. At the moment it does not seem possible to actually do anything about this.
Whats a Blackberry?
RIMs aren’t only for email (Score:1)
by dstutz (639854) on Wednesday August 06, @08:05AM (#6624466)
(http://www.dstutz.com/)
Some of you are saying these RIM devices are useless and who needs wireless email anyway, but you’re missing the point that they can do a LOT more than that. RIM has (had?) an SDK available for free download on their website in the past so they obviously intended people to develop their own apps for these things. My company (IBM) is one of them. I don’t use it as much now, but for at least a year I was depending on one of these things to support me as a technician in the field. Our whole service-call system runs on our RIMs and it saves soooo much time and headache. We receive, update and close calls with a few clicks/turns of the thumbwheel as well as filling out the form to send back to IBM detailing what happened (used for billing/parts tracking among other things). Without these, I would have to either call a human being or dial in with my laptop. Two things that aren’t much fun when you’re driving all over the place trying to get work done.
I was curious about what this settlement means to our use of these devices, but then I was reading through and saw how people think that RIM will most likely license the technology. Losing these things would suck for us techs.