$612.5 MEELION

[cartman]

Those of you who have Blackberrys, do not fear. RIM is paying $612.5 million to NTP to settle the legal claims.

hxxp://rawstory.com/news/2006/Blackberry_maker_settles_patent_dispute_0303.html

VIA WSJ WIRES:

Research In Motion Ltd. agreed to pay $612.5 million to settle its long-running legal dispute with patent firm NTP Inc., according to NTP lawyer Jim Wallace.

The agreement comes shortly before a federal judge was set to decide whether to impose a ban on BlackBerry sales and service in the U.S. Last Friday, Judge James R. Spencer rebuked both sides for prolonging their dispute in court, saying that "this should have been settled, but it hasn't." A tentative $450 million settlement was reached last year but fell apart before it was finalized.

In a jury trial in 2002, NTP won a verdict that BlackBerry infringes on NTP's wireless-email patents, but RIM continued to press the case, pinning its hopes on support from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. RIM has sought to bolster its case by highlighting recent moves by that office to reject NTP's patents.

[JonInMiddleGA]

$612m here, $612m there ... sooner or later it adds up to real money.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

$612m here, $612m there ... sooner or later it adds up to real money.

I agree. $1 billion is a nice round number.

[SirFozzie]

too bad the patent troll gets paid off, it'll encourage others

[sterlingice]

Yeah, no kidding. I don't know the case intimately but the way it was presented in the news, it looked like a patent squatter.

SI

[SirFozzie]

it was a patent that shouldn't have been issued in the first place, the Patent Office is now YANKING them, but the court didn't care to hear about it.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

it was a patent that shouldn't have been issued in the first place, the Patent Office is now YANKING them, but the court didn't care to hear about it.

Doesn't make a difference. The judge was about to shut Blackberry down. Users were already getting nervous, and I'm willing to bet good numbers of them were already jumping to other mobile mail providers. RIM had to make this problem go away, or they were going to lose a lot more than $612M.

[SirFozzie]

which means that the Blackberry folks should be having the government pay them for $612 million for issuing a bogus patent that they had to pay off

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

too bad the patent troll gets paid off, it'll encourage others

"Patent troll" is a borderline characterization here -- one of the principals in NTP tried to commoditize the patent in the early '90's and failed.

RIM were no saints themselves, either, as I understand they tried to skate through a demonstration in court and got caught.

[kcchief19]

I'll admit that I don't know all the intimate details of the case, but I too think the "patent troll" characterization is a homerism.

Yes, once some of their patents were challenged NTP has lost some of them, but thus far the one key patent in this case has been upheld. To a certain degree, patent cases from my understanding are a complete reversal of burden of proof -- if a patent is challenged, it falls unless the defendent holder can successfully defend it.

Everybody else has been paying the license fees to NTP except BlackBerry. That maybe their bed and try to squirrel out of it. Do we really want to have a system where patents mean nothing -- where you can invent something and have somebody else take your invention and market it without compensating you? Intellectual property should mean something. To me, BlackBerry was just a software pirate trying to justify their actions by saying everybody is using their devices so it must be OK.

[SirFozzie]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

I'll admit that I don't know all the intimate details of the case, but I too think the "patent troll" characterization is a homerism.

Yes, once some of their patents were challenged NTP has lost some of them, but thus far the one key patent in this case has been upheld. To a certain degree, patent cases from my understanding are a complete reversal of burden of proof -- if a patent is challenged, it falls unless the defendent holder can successfully defend it.

Everybody else has been paying the license fees to NTP except BlackBerry. That maybe their bed and try to squirrel out of it. Do we really want to have a system where patents mean nothing -- where you can invent something and have somebody else take your invention and market it without compensating you? Intellectual property should mean something. To me, BlackBerry was just a software pirate trying to justify their actions by saying everybody is using their devices so it must be OK.

Incorrect. All five patents in this case have received rejections. Some of them are FINAL rejections (They won't be reconsidered) Others can be appealed

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

Do we really want to have a system where patents mean nothing

Not specific to this case nor to Fozzie, but ... yeah, I believe there's a certain element in the U.S. that would like very much to move a long way in that direction. As much as anything because they seem to disagree with the premise that "Intellectual property should mean something".

(by "certain element" I am not referring to any group in particular, other than those who think/act in that way. I don't have any feeling that they're much more organized than that, else I imagine that I'd be a lot more concerned about the subject than I already am)

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Not specific to this case nor to Fozzie, but ... yeah, I believe there's a certain element in the U.S. that would like very much to move a long way in that direction. As much as anything because they seem to disagree with the premise that "Intellectual property should mean something".

(by "certain element" I am not referring to any group in particular, other than those who think/act in that way. I don't have any feeling that they're much more organized than that, else I imagine that I'd be a lot more concerned about the subject than I already am)

agree 100% Mr. Waits

[SirFozzie]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Not specific to this case nor to Fozzie, but ... yeah, I believe there's a certain element in the U.S. that would like very much to move a long way in that direction. As much as anything because they seem to disagree with the premise that "Intellectual property should mean something".

(by "certain element" I am not referring to any group in particular, other than those who think/act in that way. I don't have any feeling that they're much more organized than that, else I imagine that I'd be a lot more concerned about the subject than I already am)

Mind you, I agree folks should have an incentive to invent, and the idea of patents work fine. It's just that amongst other things (submarine patents and all that) the Patent Office doesn't have the time/money/people to thoroughly check most patents and have turned into a rubber stamp.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

Mind you, I agree folks should have an incentive to invent, and the idea of patents work fine. It's just that amongst other things (submarine patents and all that) the Patent Office doesn't have the time/money/people to thoroughly check most patents and have turned into a rubber stamp.

Do keep in mind that when I said I wasn't referring to you, I really meant it.

I probably wouldn't argue the point about the Patent Office being incapable of keeping up with demand. They're probably right there (I haven't looked it up so I'm just going with probably) with the FCC as being underfunded & understaffed to the degree that they really don't have a chance to keep up.

[SirFozzie]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Do keep in mind that when I said I wasn't referring to you, I really meant it.

Yeah, I know. Just clarifying what my point of view on the whole thing was

[lytic]

I've been following it due to being a grad school and having to write about it. I think one of the other big motivators for RIM to move on is because recently Microsoft has announced that it's going to offer a blackberry type service. It's pretty hard to be competitive against the giant if you are in court.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Not specific to this case nor to Fozzie, but ... yeah, I believe there's a certain element in the U.S. that would like very much to move a long way in that direction. As much as anything because they seem to disagree with the premise that "Intellectual property should mean something".

(by "certain element" I am not referring to any group in particular, other than those who think/act in that way. I don't have any feeling that they're much more organized than that, else I imagine that I'd be a lot more concerned about the subject than I already am)

Hey, you know I'm with you on that one, Jon (tho maybe not the stringent levels of punishment you recommend). But, I'm also not for rewarding someone who tries to patent something for the sake of owning the patent and suing later for someone else's work.

SI