Patent holding company NTP settles with Apple, others over e-mail patent
Apple, Google and a number of other huge technology companies have settled a suit with so-called "patent troll" NTP relating to a wireless e-mail patent that was previously used to harvest $612.5 million from RIM in 2006.
NTP, a patent holding operation that produces no products, dismissed its suit against a number of companies in the technology and communications sectors as the group settled out of court for undisclosed financial terms, reports Bloomberg.
The settlement brings an end to the suit first filed against AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in 2007 and laterexpanded to include Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola in 2010. At issue were eight patents credited to NTP co-founder Tom Campana, who the company claims is the "inventor of wireless e-mail," and related to e-mail delivery over wireless networks. Campana, who died of cancer in 2004, was a prolific inventor of communications patents of which NTP holds 50.
?Each of the parties in this arrangement are in some way making use of NTP?s, of Tom Campana?s, original wireless e-mail invention, although they?re at different levels of the industry,? said NTP lawyer Ron Epstein. ?Some are providing wireless services, others e-mail, others the handset, but they all are getting the same license.?
Epstein is referring to the variety of companies involved in the suit, which came after NTP successfully leveraged the patent against BlackBerry maker RIM in 2006. Emboldened by the win, NTP sued the U.S. telecoms and handset makers but ex parte requests to review the patents in question delayed a ruling.
At the time of the suit's expansion in 2010, NTP co-founder and patent lawyer Donald E. Stout claimed the use of "intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair." He went on to say, "unfortunately, litigation is our only means of ensuring the inventor of the fundamental technology on which wireless e-mail is based, Tom Campana, and NTP shareholders are recognized, and are fairly and reasonably compensated for their innovative work and investment. We took the necessary action to protect our intellectual property."
Out of the 13 companies that settled, HTC alone issued a response saying it was ?pleased to see this issue resolved reasonably and without further litigation."
NTP, a patent holding operation that produces no products, dismissed its suit against a number of companies in the technology and communications sectors as the group settled out of court for undisclosed financial terms, reports Bloomberg.
The settlement brings an end to the suit first filed against AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in 2007 and laterexpanded to include Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola in 2010. At issue were eight patents credited to NTP co-founder Tom Campana, who the company claims is the "inventor of wireless e-mail," and related to e-mail delivery over wireless networks. Campana, who died of cancer in 2004, was a prolific inventor of communications patents of which NTP holds 50.
?Each of the parties in this arrangement are in some way making use of NTP?s, of Tom Campana?s, original wireless e-mail invention, although they?re at different levels of the industry,? said NTP lawyer Ron Epstein. ?Some are providing wireless services, others e-mail, others the handset, but they all are getting the same license.?
Epstein is referring to the variety of companies involved in the suit, which came after NTP successfully leveraged the patent against BlackBerry maker RIM in 2006. Emboldened by the win, NTP sued the U.S. telecoms and handset makers but ex parte requests to review the patents in question delayed a ruling.
At the time of the suit's expansion in 2010, NTP co-founder and patent lawyer Donald E. Stout claimed the use of "intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair." He went on to say, "unfortunately, litigation is our only means of ensuring the inventor of the fundamental technology on which wireless e-mail is based, Tom Campana, and NTP shareholders are recognized, and are fairly and reasonably compensated for their innovative work and investment. We took the necessary action to protect our intellectual property."
Out of the 13 companies that settled, HTC alone issued a response saying it was ?pleased to see this issue resolved reasonably and without further litigation."
Comments
How much more evidence do we need that the US patent system is fundamentally broken? People have been using wireless mail since the days of carrier pigeons. In the past years it was discovered that there were descriptions of wireless email "prior art" documented in Norway that predate NTP's "invention" of it. The US patent office failed to find the documented prior art when it granted the patent troll company its wireless email patents. Hopefully that discovery helped defang NTP enough to render NTP's latest monetary settlements significantly smaller than the HALF BILLION dollars they extorted won from RIM.
Prediction: The guy pointing out the brokenness of the US patent system will not get piled on and excoriated in this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Durandal1707
Prediction: The guy pointing out the brokenness of the US patent system will not get piled on and excoriated in this thread.
Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.
And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Durandal1707
Prediction: The guy pointing out the brokenness of the US patent system will not get piled on and excoriated in this thread.
Broken or not, it is good to see that those who steal other people's tech are finally brought to justice.
When Apple steals other people's patented technologies, they usually drag things through the courts before they finally settle. It is good to see Apple manning up early in the game for a change.
It seems to me that there are two types of patent violations (or IP violations in general): one where the offending party sees something the protected party does and copies it and one where the "offending" party creates something that turns out to be covered by someone else's patent. I believe it's the latter that that Carmack was complaining about in his famous quote. I'm sure that happens all the time, and it speaks to the fact that oftentimes the bar for what should be able to be protected is too low. That is, obvious "next steps" are patented by the one guy or one company moments ahead of dozens of others.
In other words, there is "stealing" and "patent infringement." Without knowing the details of any particular case, it's not always obvious which it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26
Broken or not, it is good to see that those who steal other people's tech are finally brought to justice.
When Apple steals other people's patented technologies, they usually drag things through the courts before they finally settle. It is good to see Apple manning up early in the game for a change.
If you want to assert that Apple stole technology from this patent troll company, you should state that outright and justify that assertion by explaining what this patent for wireless email is about. There is no way, no how that a patent for "wireless email" makes sense. It is ludicrous at face value. There is wireless data communication, and there are countless many applications that use wireless data communication in a way whereby the implementation of the application makes no consideration to the fact that the communication takes place over a wireless network. The very notion of "wireless email", as something that it patentable, is as preposterous as it could possibly be. The question that begs to be answered is why any court ever lent any support to this ridiculous patent. The article here does not reveal the amount of money that Apple paid, but hopefully it was no more than the amount that they estimated they would spend without settling out of court.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.
And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.
It confuses me that you implied that anyone would confuse the requirement for an implementation with protection via copyright.
I do not agree that requirement for an implementation is the answer, for several reasons. Most obviously, it is damned easy to implement wireless email. All you need is a device that has the capability for wireless communication, and that also runs an email application. Requiring an implementation would not solve anything. This frivolous patent trolling business will not stop until the courts get smarter. This patent should never have been awarded in the first place, and if it has ever been upheld by a court of law, it should not have been. The very idea of a patent for wireless email is preposterous, at face value. The only quasi-original idea that the person behind this patent had, was that if they filed this patent, it would probably be awarded and they could probably extort a lot of money from a lot of other companies. Beyond that, they had no original ideas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.
And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.
What??? What makes you think the patent system is broken? The patent system isn't broken. What is broken is the mentality of the computer industry. Where do you all get off telling a patent owner that he or she is "a troll" for enforcing a patent. A troll is someone that charges to cross a bridge that the troll doesn't own. NTP bought and paid for the patents. They aren't trolls.
Large U.S. corporations are to blame for the high cost of patent litigation. Instead of paying inventors a reasonable price to license technology they are using, they hired an army of lawyers and tried to spend the patent owners into the ground. Large corporations were quite successful at doing this until companies like NTP put up the money to take the case all the way through an appeals court. The NTP patents have been delcared valid and infringed by a district court, a court of appeals, then again by a district court, and yet again by an appeals court. Then the patents were reexamined and found valid at the patent office, and now they are back in court yet again. CATCH A CLUE EVERYONE......the NTP patents are valid and infringed. How many more tens of millions of dollars does NTP have to spend to prove it.
The inventor of the NTP patents offered the patents to RIM for 5 million and RIM scoffed at them and went out and paid lawyers at Jones Day 10 million dollars run the inventor into the ground. RIM was above paying some small petty inventor for patented technology. Shows how smart RIM is. If RIM had paid 5 million for the patents, it would own the smartphone market right now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.
And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.
What do you mean when you say, "the patent system is broken". In what way is it broken? Is it broken because it issued a patent on push email. I think we can all agree that would be a stupid argument. The patent system should definitely be encouraging innovation for things like push email. Or do you think the patent system is broken because the NTP patents are invalid? If you think that, please explain to me why you think they are invalid. Have you read the claims of the patent? Do you even know what the filing date of the patents are?
Or do you just think that the only people that should be granted patents are big large corporations that own market share and are making and selling products. If you think market leaders should be the ones to receive protection from the government, you should move to China. That is exactly how it works in China. Here in the United States, our patent system and patent laws are designed to protect the inventor. We don't give a shit how big your company is or how powerful you are in the market. If you want to sell the next invention, you need to be the first one to the patent office or pay the inventor that got there first. Its a race, and if you don't like to compete, then don't sell innovative products.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaiser_soze
If you want to assert that Apple stole technology from this patent troll company, you should state that outright and justify that assertion by explaining what this patent for wireless email is about. There is no way, no how that a patent for "wireless email" makes sense. It is ludicrous at face value. There is wireless data communication, and there are countless many applications that use wireless data communication in a way whereby the implementation of the application makes no consideration to the fact that the communication takes place over a wireless network. The very notion of "wireless email", as something that it patentable, is as preposterous as it could possibly be. The question that begs to be answered is why any court ever lent any support to this ridiculous patent. The article here does not reveal the amount of money that Apple paid, but hopefully it was no more than the amount that they estimated they would spend without settling out of court.
The patents relate to "push email" vs "pull". Hopefully the settlement was for the value that customers place on "push" vs. "pull" email. If the handset manufacturers don't want to pay for that value, they should just take out the "push" feature and go back to the old school email where you had to log into your email account and request your emails. Everyone in this industry is so hipocritical. They act as though the patents cover a worthless feature, but when it comes down to it, they won't take the feature out of the products. RIM lost a 600M dollar lawsuit in 2006. Apple didn't release its iPhone until 2007. Why did Apple put "push email" into its phones when it knew the patents were valid and enforceable. I'll tell you why......."push email" is a DAMN GOOD invention and no one would have any market share without it and the license to use this technology is worth BILLIONS.
One last thing. Do you realize that a company cannot apply for a patent in the US. Only the inventor can apply for the patent. The only way Apple or any other company a gets a US patent is by having an employee sign an agreement saying that they will assign the patent to the company. How is NTP any different. NTP paid the inventor for an assignment. Do any of you really think that the patent laws should say, "you are only entitled to enforce a patent if you are an employer of the inventor." How stupid is that.
Ya'll just need to admit to yourself that RIM, despite its billions of dollars wasn't the FIRST to invent push email. Is that really so hard to believe. The patent laws require everyone to get a license from the first person that invents and discloses the invention to the patent office. That's what creates the vibrant innovative economy that we have in the US. Letting big companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft infringe those patents with impunity is shooting the goose that lays the golden egg. And for what? Seriously, you don't think Apple and Google can afford to pay a license to use technology that makes their products better? Why is the inventor not entitled to compensation but the shareholders of Apple are? Sorry, I just don't see the logic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaiser_soze
It confuses me that you implied that anyone would confuse the requirement for an implementation with protection via copyright.
I do not agree that requirement for an implementation is the answer, for several reasons. Most obviously, it is damned easy to implement wireless email. All you need is a device that has the capability for wireless communication, and that also runs an email application. Requiring an implementation would not solve anything. This frivolous patent trolling business will not stop until the courts get smarter. This patent should never have been awarded in the first place, and if it has ever been upheld by a court of law, it should not have been. The very idea of a patent for wireless email is preposterous, at face value. The only quasi-original idea that the person behind this patent had, was that if they filed this patent, it would probably be awarded and they could probably extort a lot of money from a lot of other companies. Beyond that, they had no original ideas.
Because, by implementation, I don't necessarily mean a specific set of code in a specific language where copyright might apply. People on these forums get confused about different types of IP all the time, so I was just heading off the argument that, "software doesn't need patents, it can be protected by copyright, and that's all you need if there is an implementation." I think that software machines do deserve language independent protection.
But, if you have to implement "wireless email" to even apply for a patent for it, you'll probably have to make use of an awful lot of prior art for that implementation. You'll have to distinctly show what parts of your implementation are unique and novel (which will probably stop the madness right there). And, if someone else wants to invent their own "wireless email", it'll be totally clear what parts they need to design around to avoid infringement.
Without an implementation, a patent like this morphs into anything anyone else might do that involves email and wireless communications, because it all becomes an argument about language, not about how a specific software machine actually works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
The patent laws require everyone to get a license from the first person that invents and discloses the invention to the patent office. That's what creates the vibrant innovative economy that we have in the US. Letting big companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft infringe those patents with impunity is shooting the goose that lays the golden egg. And for what? Seriously, you don't think Apple and Google can afford to pay a license to use technology that makes their products better? Why is the inventor not entitled to compensation but the shareholders of Apple are? Sorry, I just don't see the logic.
The logic is: simply coming up with a bunch of ideas, writing them out on paper and registering them, then sitting back and waiting until others actually implement those ideas doesn't make anything vibrant. And it costs virtually nothing to do.
To me, the whole point of patents is to ensure that people who invest a lot of time and money in developing a unique idea into a product (or multiple products) are allowed exclusive rights to use that idea for a certain period of time to recoup their investment (and profit from it). If other companies are allowed to simply copy the product(s) created from that unique idea before the initial investment has been recouped, then there's no incentive to invest in turning original ideas into products.
However, just pontificating ideas all day and patenting them without any intent of working with someone to put those ideas into products does nothing but make creating such products prohibitively expensive. Obviously not for established companies like Apple, but for small startups (which is where you tend to get "vibrancy" from).
As the owner of a small startup myself, it's quite disconcerting to think that I could be bankrupted by sleeper patents like these just because an idea I came up with on my own and turned into a product was the same idea someone was sitting on and just waiting for others to create a product from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
What??? What makes you think the patent system is broken? The patent system isn't broken. What is broken is the mentality of the computer industry. Where do you all get off telling a patent owner that he or she is "a troll" for enforcing a patent. A troll is someone that charges to cross a bridge that the troll doesn't own. NTP bought and paid for the patents. They aren't trolls.
Large U.S. corporations are to blame for the high cost of patent litigation. Instead of paying inventors a reasonable price to license technology they are using, they hired an army of lawyers and tried to spend the patent owners into the ground. Large corporations were quite successful at doing this until companies like NTP put up the money to take the case all the way through an appeals court. The NTP patents have been delcared valid and infringed by a district court, a court of appeals, then again by a district court, and yet again by an appeals court. Then the patents were reexamined and found valid at the patent office, and now they are back in court yet again. CATCH A CLUE EVERYONE......the NTP patents are valid and infringed. How many more tens of millions of dollars does NTP have to spend to prove it.
The inventor of the NTP patents offered the patents to RIM for 5 million and RIM scoffed at them and went out and paid lawyers at Jones Day 10 million dollars run the inventor into the ground. RIM was above paying some small petty inventor for patented technology. Shows how smart RIM is. If RIM had paid 5 million for the patents, it would own the smartphone market right now.
Without an implementation, regardless of whether the courts have upheld these patents or not, they amount to nothing more than an idea. This is how the patent system is broken: the line between ideas and inventions has become hopelessly blurred to the point where the courts are unable to distinguish one from another.
Just because no one was interested in buying these but a patent troll company, doesn't mean they were "infringing" them because they didn't want to compensate an "inventor". It more likely thought they were a) garbage, or b) had nothing to do with what they were doing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
The patents relate to "push email" vs "pull". Hopefully the settlement was for the value that customers place on "push" vs. "pull" email. If the handset manufacturers don't want to pay for that value, they should just take out the "push" feature and go back to the old school email where you had to log into your email account and request your emails. Everyone in this industry is so hipocritical. They act as though the patents cover a worthless feature, but when it comes down to it, they won't take the feature out of the products. RIM lost a 600M dollar lawsuit in 2006. Apple didn't release its iPhone until 2007. Why did Apple put "push email" into its phones when it knew the patents were valid and enforceable. I'll tell you why......."push email" is a DAMN GOOD invention and no one would have any market share without it and the license to use this technology is worth BILLIONS.
A patent that covers all possible implementations of "push email" seems to be the poster boy for overly broad patents. (That would be like (thanks to Wikipedia for the wording) a patent for, "a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds," as opposed to, "a machine consisting of a wooden cylinder surrounded by rows of slender spikes, which pull the [cotton] lint through the bars of a comb-like grid. The grids [are] closely spaced, preventing the seeds from passing through. Loose cotton [is] brushed off, preventing the mechanism from jamming.") That the courts found in favor of the trolls on this one just means that patent law is broken and that people are patenting ideas, not inventions. The courts hands are tied, it's the law that's broken.
On the other hand, if the "inventor" of this idea had been forced to create an implementation of "push email" to get this patent, a) he probably wouldn't even have been able to, and b) assuming he was able, it would have turned his idea into an actual invention, one which companies would have then either decided to license, or design around. In either case, we wouldn't be reading stories about the patent trolls NTP extorting millions from various companies because someone had the foresight to write down a few ideas on a patent application without any confirmation that they could actually produce a working machine from those ideas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
Sorry, I just don't see the logic.
That is quite obvious when it takes you FOUR posts in a row (the first two of them quoting the same post) to get the same idea out… I think you like to see your name in print.
Quote:
Originally Posted by auxio
The logic is: simply coming up with a bunch of ideas, writing them out on paper and registering them, then sitting back and waiting until others actually implement those ideas doesn't make anything vibrant. And it costs virtually nothing to do.
To me, the whole point of patents is to ensure that people who invest a lot of time and money in developing a unique idea into a product (or multiple products) are allowed exclusive rights to use that idea for a certain period of time to recoup their investment (and profit from it). If other companies are allowed to simply copy the product(s) created from that unique idea before the initial investment has been recouped, then there's no incentive to invest in turning original ideas into products.
However, just pontificating ideas all day and patenting them without any intent of working with someone to put those ideas into products does nothing but make creating such products prohibitively expensive. Obviously not for established companies like Apple, but for small startups (which is where you tend to get "vibrancy" from).
As the owner of a small startup myself, it's quite disconcerting to think that I could be bankrupted by sleeper patents like these just because an idea I came up with on my own and turned into a product was the same idea someone was sitting on and just waiting for others to create a product from.
If it costs "virtually nothing to do" why don't companies with billions of dollars just do it first. The fact is, it doesn't cost "virtually nothing". Patents cost about $20,0000 to obtain and maintain. It usually takes a couple of patents to build a portfolio that can be defended. This is the problem with the computer industry.....the facts don't support their position. The computer industry rants about how patents are a problem but can't produce a cogent argument as to why the system is a problem. This very patent portfolio is a case in point. When Apple released the iPhone, it new that NTP had valid patents and that RIM paid 600M in a settlement. Why did Apple include it.
Secondly, you misunderstand the patent system. The patent system is not a reward for selling products. It rewards inventing. Inventing doesn't require manufacturing. In fact, within Apple, many different people do many different jobs to get a product out the door. Only the person that "conceived" of the invention is suppose to be named on the patent.
Thirdly, the intent of the patent system is to cause inventors to publicly disclose their inventions. The sooner the invention is disclosed, the sooner the patent will expire and the technology will be dedicated to the public. The fear of getting beat causes everyone to create as fast as they can. That is what creates the "vibrant" economy. Companies that don't have the fear of losing their position become stagnant. If you take away the patent system, that is what you would have.
Quote:
Originally Posted by auxio
The logic is: simply coming up with a bunch of ideas, writing them out on paper and registering them, then sitting back and waiting until others actually implement those ideas doesn't make anything vibrant. And it costs virtually nothing to do.
To me, the whole point of patents is to ensure that people who invest a lot of time and money in developing a unique idea into a product (or multiple products) are allowed exclusive rights to use that idea for a certain period of time to recoup their investment (and profit from it). If other companies are allowed to simply copy the product(s) created from that unique idea before the initial investment has been recouped, then there's no incentive to invest in turning original ideas into products.
However, just pontificating ideas all day and patenting them without any intent of working with someone to put those ideas into products does nothing but make creating such products prohibitively expensive. Obviously not for established companies like Apple, but for small startups (which is where you tend to get "vibrancy" from).
As the owner of a small startup myself, it's quite disconcerting to think that I could be bankrupted by sleeper patents like these just because an idea I came up with on my own and turned into a product was the same idea someone was sitting on and just waiting for others to create a product from.
One other thing....you say patents make products "prohibitively expensive". That is easy to say and difficult to prove. I could argue that the products wouldn't exist without the patent system because slavish copying would prevent anyone from breaking into any new market. Take Apple for instance. If Microsoft could make iPads, Apple would have had no incentive to make an iPad. What would be the point of making it if Microsoft could sell it. The only reason you can't see this aspect of patents is because they are doing their job. It doesn't matter whether it is Apple or a small inventor, a small business, or a non-practicing entity, the risk of someone else getting a patent on the product that everyone wants to buy is the very thing that creates the race to develop. It is a shame that the computer industry doesn't see it that way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
Without an implementation, regardless of whether the courts have upheld these patents or not, they amount to nothing more than an idea. This is how the patent system is broken: the line between ideas and inventions has become hopelessly blurred to the point where the courts are unable to distinguish one from another.
Just because no one was interested in buying these but a patent troll company, doesn't mean they were "infringing" them because they didn't want to compensate an "inventor". It more likely thought they were a) garbage, or b) had nothing to do with what they were doing.
Again, the facts don't support your position. When Google and Apple made smart phones in 2007-2008, they couldn't possibly have thought that these patents were garbage or had nothing to do with their phones. How old were you in 2006? Doesn't everyone remember the courts on the eve of shutting down RIM's Blackberry servers. Why did Google and Apple implement this "garbage" into their phones knowing that RIM paid out more than half a billion dollars for having the feature. Again, the computer industry is quick to make these off the cuff statements about the patent system being broken, patents being overly broad, the patents being worthless. The fact is, the computer industry could easily take the infringing features out of their devices and they won't do it because they want the benefit of the invention but don't want to pay for it. My position may be difficult to prove with many other cases, but not with this RIM case. It is absolutely clear that Apple and Google knew they would be paying out a license someday and that day has come. If big companies like RIM didn't use an army of lawyers to avoid paying inventors a reasonable royalty, the stakes wouldn't be so high. Big software companies have made their bed and now they get to lye in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Damn_Its_Hot
That is quite obvious when it takes you FOUR posts in a row (the first two of them quoting the same post) to get the same idea out… I think you like to see your name in print.
Ha Ha, I see I set myself up for that one. Do you have anything intelligent to say? Do you really think I wrote those posts because I like to see my name? First, of all my name isn't associated with any of those posts. Second of all, isn't it apparent to you that I am passionate about defending the patent system? Let me help you out here. My my purpose is to make people aware that this negative attitude towards the patent system risks killing the most valuable asset this country has. I know it sounds nice to rid ourselves of the patent system. However, just because it sounds nice doesn't mean we should do it. Communism had the same ring of fairness, but that doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. The fact is, the patent system weakens the entrenched players. Weakening the entrenched players keeps the competition alive. Patents are a very effective tool to do that.