It’s been known for a long time now that unfortunately you can patent any stupid idea, no matter how vague it may seem, and have it bite people in the rear later when a company with some actual means and resources to market a legitimate, refined concept happens to “infringe” on that overvague idea. Once again, that stupidity is being demonstrated.
The U.S. patent office insists that A patent cannot be obtained on a mere idea or suggestion. But there’s plenty of cases where people have submitted and were issued stupid, vague, and probably invalid patents (take button clicking, for example) that strongly suggest the contrary.
Take for instance, the patent case going to court now, involving one of my favorite gadgets, the RIM Blackberry mobile E-mail device. It’s a sleek, easy to use device… and according to some random patent-holding company, it shouldn’t be on the market:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/06/07/HNrimntp_1.html
In short:
NTP in November 2001 filed a complaint contending that RIM’s products and services infringe on at least five NTP patents (numbers 5,625,670; 5,631,946; 5,819,172; 6,067,451 and 6,317,592) granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) covering the use of radio-frequency wireless communications in e-mail systems.
In August 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in Arlington, Virginia-based NTP’s favor and ordered RIM to pay damages of US$53.7 million. The court had placed an injunction on BlackBerry models 850, 857, 950, 957, 5810, 6510, 6210 and 6750, though RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, was subsequently granted a stay on the injunction pending this week’s appeal.
Now, I haven’t actually taken the time to look these patents up (perhaps you can enter those listed patent numbers yourself here, and form your own opinion). However, I seriously doubt that the practice of transmitting electronic messages wirelessly was something that NTL first dreamed up. I’m fact I’m sure amateur radio operators, and SMS providers in Europe would have plenty of prior art to use against the NTL patents.
Further, I might be inclined to give NTL a bit of leeway if it weren’t for the fact that they not only want damages, but effectively want to injunct all of the current blackberry models on the market. By injuct, do they mean they want them removed from the hands of their users? Or, do they want no more Blackberry handhelds to be made? Regardless, something very sinister is afoot when a company won’t even take licensing fees to make a profit, and would rather shut down a company’s livelihood and keep great technology out of the hands of people willing to buy it.
For the record, I had a Blackberry back in 2001, and I loved it. I love the current models even more. However, while having truly mobile push e-mail was A Good Thing, paying as much as my cell service for it ($39.99 a month, and the price hasn’t gone down) was a little too much. Sadly, you can bet that even if the Blackberry concept survives this court case, the legal costs aren’t going to allow the service to get any cheaper.
