RIM loses another round, $450 million settlement ruled invalid
By Evan Blass 
posted November 30th 2005 12:45PM
posted November 30th 2005 12:45PM
RIM just can't catch a break. Following ruling after ruling against the Blackberry manufacturer, a federal judge has now decided that the disputed $450 million settlement with NTP that RIM was looking to have enforced is not in fact valid. District Judge James Spencer could next decide to reissue an injunction that would suspend Blackberry service in the US, which might effectively force RIM to cough up as much as $1 billion to avoid. All of this action comes while the validity of NTP's original patents is still in question, but that is still an issue for the Patent Office and thus has no bearing on the current proceedings.
[Thanks, Jim L.]
This definitely looks like a turn for the worse for RIM. The fact that their stock halted trading this morning is invariably an omen of upcoming bad news. I find it highly irresponsible of RIM management to be screwing around with lawsuits instead of settling it and moving on to the business of providing service to customers and fending off competition.
Am I the only one that's finds this extrememly retarded. NTP takes RIM to court over patent Infringment, they agree on a settlement which never really closes and then the validity of those patents is rejected by the U.S. Patent Office.
Now apparently those Patents are being re-validated by the patent office(As per NTP's request I assume). The U.S. judge has now basically said I'm bored of this and don't feel like dealing with it anymore so I'm not going to wait for the Patent Office to finish the validation, yet he allows the whole fiasco to continue on by not forcing NTP to accept the previous settlement. Cause that makes sense, I have to seriously wonder if things would be different if RIM were an American company instead of Canadian.
As it is last I read something like 50% of blackberry users in the U.S. are government employees, I believe that the whitehouse staff use them even, and of the remaining 50% of users at least some probably belong to some sort of fortune 500 company or whatnot. I say pull the U.S. blackberry service for a week or 2, with what it costs to initally setup a corporate blackberry service I would not be suprised at all to see the ball start rolling then.
Simply stunning, Ayn was certainly not the sharpest tack but you have to admit that large portions of 'Atlas Shrugged' are coming true all over the place.
And yes, I too wonder how this would be handled by an impartial court, I can't believe a US court can try cases like this.
NTP is everything that is wrong with the current economic model, and they're being rewarded for it. It's the American Dream, legally taking money that you didn't work for and are not entitled to.
Can't wait till the Motorola Q comes out!
Fuck NTP.
Rim puts great ideas into practice, into the hands of consumers.
Greedy companies like NTP merely impede great products.
What evidence is there, that the US Court is not fair and impartial? The mere fact that one is not happy about the ruling is not evidence of impartiality. If NTP is the owner of the IP they should receive the fair market value of its worth. There would be no incentive to innovate, if there was no reward to innovate. RIM apparently preferred the risk of having no deal in place.
What actually happened with RIM? Why are they being sued and would it be smart to buy a blackberry right now? i want one
I wouldn't buy a now Blackberry. Wait till the new Motorola version of the blackberry comes out.
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000567051847/
#6, The problem being that the Patents behind the IP that this whole thing is about have been invalidated once already by the US patent office, the fact that the US judge wants this case done before the Patent Office is finished doing their second review of these Patents and then extends the case by not forcing NTP to take the Half Billion Dollar settlement that was agreed upon earlier strikes me as quite fishy. Either you want the case to end or you don't, you can't have it both ways.
OMG Bayne, you have got to be kidding!
First off read the details of the numerous court cases, the rulings so far are mighty suspicous, it's not direct proof of "impartiality" (you actually meant partiality here) but it sure makes you think.
Your comment about stifling innovation is also pretty funny, RIM is the one doing all the innovating here, NTP was founded for the sole purpose of suing for cash because they stumbled accross a couple patents that were NEVER USED that bear some resemblance to how several features of RIM devices work. Who do you really think is stifling innovation here? WOW!
Do your homework man, nothing stifles creativity like patents, copyright, IP, DRM, etc...
NTP is nothing but a patent troll, a company that simply amasses patents, does nothing with them and collects royalties or settlements from legitimate businesses trying to serve customers. Makes me sick to the stomach.
It's not just the $23M upfront to settle in '02. Such an agreement would have meant that NTP would have gotten a slice of every RIM pie that used NTP IP. This is what RIM has been trying to avoid all along.
If the judge in the case just throws up his hands and rules w/o all of the research at the USPTO being done, there is grounds for an appeal, and in turn another chapter in this story. If the judge rule prematurely, he's just going to look like an idiot and waste more taxpayer money.
It doesn't matter if RIM put NTP's technology to better use than NTP was. The fact remains that it might be NTP's IP and if it is, it means RIM is really up a creek.
In the end, the only winners are going to be the lawyers.
Chris,
Agreed. Seems like the system was designed for lawyers to make bank.
#8 why? So you can have a crap OS that crashes as soon as it's asked to do a single task? WM sucks and that's why BlackBerry has killed MS in this segment of the market (Q-like functionality is already available and has been for years).
NTP licks balls and patents trolls should not be rewarded.
I would assume that this has no affect on Canadian services? Just wondering...
So what happens if RIM pays up (1 bil),
stays open, and THEN Patent Office throws out
NTP patents again? Does RIM get their money back?
#16, my question exactly. If anyone has some legal knowledge about IP, please tell me why (if the patent is invalidated) RIM has to pay anything?
To be fair, though, here is factual info regarding NTP courtesy of CNN:
NTP is often portrayed as a so-called "patent troll," a company with no products and little infrastructure. These predatory companies amass patent portfolios with the intent of filing suits against legitimate businesses. They have become many corporations' nightmares.
The trouble is that NTP, based in Arlington, Virginia, doesn't exactly fit the mold. It was co-founded by Thomas J. Campana Jr., a Chicago-area engineer who in 1990 created a system to send e-mails between computers and wireless devices. His wireless e-mail innovations were shown at the well-known Comdex computer show in Las Vegas.
Campana was working for his own company, but his primary customer, a wireless carrier called Telefind, was unraveling. To protect his work, he formed NTP along with a northern Virginia attorney, Don Stout.
"The guy did make a good-faith effort of starting his own company; It didn't pan out for him," said Charles F. Wieland III, an intellectual-property attorney in Alexandria, Virginia. "He actually tried."
16. It has nothing to do with services provided in any other country besides the US. The USPO and any subsequent court rulings in the US have nothing to do with the Canadian court system.
The major issue for Canadian subscribers (and Canada in general) is the effect it will have on our own economy when RIM loses over 50% of their subscriber base.
Say I wrote a program that cured cancer, then patented this program. Then, I filed my program away with no intention of releasing it to the public.
Then another company, without looking at my patent, made their own program that cured cancer. I then sue said company and force them to stop distributing their program.
Is this not similar to the situation we have here (except replace "cure cancer" with "send emails with wirless devices").
The system is a joke.
btw: I'm interested in why only RIM is affected...
First, the legal issues in this case are complex and esoteric. Many people are commenting on this case without a clue as to the real legalities involved. It would be as if someone who is not a medical doctor were commenting on a brain surgery technique.
Second, it's obvious that those who side with RIM over NTP, and excoriate NTP, do so only because they really like the RIM products. This is an entirely normal reaction...if you've been using a Blackberry for a while and really like it, you're likely to have greater sympathies with RIM than with an unknown entity known as NTP. But it's not rational commentary on this issue.
Third, this is one of the most ridiculous uninformed comments of the day:
"nothing stifles creativity like patents, copyright, IP, DRM..."
The reality is that patent laws and the related laws to protect intellectual property do everything to encourage creativity, invention, innovation and new ideas. In fact, without patent law you would see the flow of new ideas come to a grinding halt. Why would anyone or any company work hard and invest in new ideas if they were not guaranteed any return on that if the ideas sold in the marketplace? Patent laws and the recognition of intellectual property rights is a bedrock of an economy that comes up with new ideas.
So sure, I love the Blackberry devices and would hate to see any injunction shutting down their service (although that is highly unlikely). But that doesn't qualify me to make complex legal judgements in a case I know very little about regarding the relevant legal details and theory.
Also, BTW, there is no way that the BB service will be shut down. There is too much at stake, too much money to be made. If RIM were to allow the case to get that far, they would be committing suicide and they know it.
Lets all cool our heads everybody. There is no way that Blackberry service will get cut off to anyone. There are too many companies with too much riding on RIM products for that to ever happen. Thought, I competely agree with everything you said. People put down Patents and otherwise content protection because most of them grew up in this age of piracy where any content protection is either completely disregared or cracked and the ways of protecting ideas are laughed at.
PS. Why would RIM being a Canadian Company have anything to do with this?
Maybe I'm lost here, but excluding all legalities, all feelings etc etc. Some people still aren't getting this.
The simple facts are as I understand them from what has been reported are:
1. The patents that are a large basis for NTP's claims against RIM have already been INVALIDATED by the USPO once.
2. Someone appealed (or whatnot) the USPO's ruling on those patents and USPO is now reviewing them again
3. The judge has ruled that he will NOT wait for the USPO to finish it's review because he wants the case done. He then also ruled that the settlement for $450 Million is null and void and as of today, it sounds like he's trying to speed things through. (Before the USPO can finish it's review perhaps).
Truth be told I love my blackberry and I'm in canada so I have no worries about my service. On the other hand I am not such a big fan of RIM as a company, their costs are through the roof and I've found their support to be lacking to say the least. But this has nothing to do with my feelings or anything else, if the USPO came back and said the patents were valid then fine RIM was in the wrong but their not being given the chance. Now if someone can tell me what possible legal reason the judge could have for denying a stay until the USPO finished it's review, other then wanting to get this over and done with to go golfing, then I am all ears. Until then all I see is an american judge trying to force a canadian company to pay up to $1 billion to an american company before all the relevent information is available.
It sure looks like RIM is the first big looser in the mobile patent wars.
Intellisync, NTP, Wireless2web, Elata Flarion suing or selling or licensing paper patents for huge dollars.
Estimated value 2.5 - 3 billion dollars! That's nuts.
That doesn't include the patent war between Qualcomm and Nokia or Qualcomm and Broadcom.
I wouldn't be suprised to see Microsoft, Palm, Motorola Samsung and others join the battle soon.
Here's a good read on the subject
"Mobile patents war shifts to email"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/mobile_email_patents_war/
#21 "The reality is that patent laws and the related laws to protect intellectual property do everything to encourage creativity, invention, innovation and new ideas."
I wouldn't quite say that; everything is quite a lot of things to do. Rather, each has it's own reasoned role to play, and each has been exploited to the point of uselessness.
Copyrights have been extended to ridiculous lengths for the sole reason of allowing the corporation who owns them to profit off old ideas longer. So much for innovation.
Patents, designed to protect smaller inventors from larger competitors who could easily reproduce a unique product, thus forcing the inventor out of his own market, have become a means to become rich from the efforts of others, or, rather ironically, shut out new competition through patent sharing alliances.
"In fact, without patent law you would see the flow of new ideas come to a grinding halt. Why would anyone or any company work hard and invest in new ideas if they were not guaranteed any return on that if the ideas sold in the marketplace?"
Because that's how the world works. There are no guarantees. Some of us are tired of seeing companies like RIM putting years of hard work building up a successful company, so companies like NTP, who failed in their attempt, to rob them of what they earned.
On a game development forum I frequent, you have a lot of people requesting assistance on their project that's going to be the best MMORPG ever because they have the greatest idea. They are soon told (sometimes in rather unfriendly ways) the truth: ideas are a dime a dozen, the hard part is making them a reality. That's what some of us want to see rewarded.