Research in Motion hit a milestone today, only "achievement" wouldn't necessarily be the best way to describe it. The BlackBerry maker has finally ended a
long-running patent dispute with Visto Corp., paying out $267.5 million to settle the matter -- a much larger fee than the $7.7 million Visto got
from Seven Networks, but conversely a fraction of the reported $612.5 million RIM paid to settle with
NTP years back. With it, however, comes a fully paid license to use Visto's patents, and some of the plaintiff's intellectual property by way of transferred ownership. So now that we can move on from that dispute, who's next to take the mantle and vie for a piece of BlackBerry's pie?
posted Jul 16th 2009 5:18PM
I prefer apple pie. Good 'ole American classic.
Quick refresher on what the patent was for?
They patented the idea of using a mobile device while taking a poop. thus anyone using a Black Berry while taking a poop owes money to these turds.
That was incredibly unhelpful... thanks!
4 patents related to push email I believe...
So who's next to get sued about those patents?
The patents cover some interesting topics...like syncing web-based stuff. Do we know of any contemporary smartphone that does..you know, sync of web-based stuff?
What a waste of money! Do you know how many RIM jobs $267.5 million could fund? That would employ more than 10,000 Canadians.
I don't know about you, but I get my RIM jobs for free...
Mark you work for free?
Of course Mark works for free. He's a proponent of open sores.
@Soulsaber: Hahaha, something about my comment, yours, and your profile picture makes this an awesome discussion.
Patent trolls strike again?
who cares about damn canadians.
Maybe Cupertinians?
mmmm blackberry pie....
LOL @ RIM jobs.
All of these comments suck, delete them. Also, SGI patented cool years ago so Apple/Rim/etc are going to get fleeced hard.
if i have a job that requires me to have a blackberry, could that be considered a RIM job?
if i complete a task with the help of my blackberry, is that task then a RIM job?
if i am an employee at RIM, can that be conseidered my RIM job?
hmmm...???
RIM are suckers. Or do they have no patens of their own?
Anyway, stuff like this is sad, it just feeds the patent trolls, leeches of society.
Ya Im with you on this one. Dont they have any patents of their own? They saved money on research by using other companies patents but the time has come to pay up. So they paid up. I guess it all works out at the end.
They are suckers because they settled a lawsuit on patents that cover their products... and probably at a licensing fee that allows them to still make a sizable profit on their products? How exactly does that make them suckers?
And what evidence do you have that Visto was a "patent troll"? It seems unlikely based on the settlement. A patent troll is a company that asserts hundreds of patents against anyone and everyone even though there is little to no liklihood that the patents (a) cover the product; or (b) are a valuable enough improvement to be worth very much. The troll then says "but we'll go away for a one-time license royalty of $XXXX" where XXXX is much less than the cost of defending a lawsuit. The fact that RIM was willing to pay over $200 million makes either (a) or (b) highly unlikely.
Oh wait... were you just using the term patent troll because you are a hater of patents in generally, and you don't understand how they really work? That's my guess. So, would you rather there be no protection for innovation? Do you think you'd be reading about all the new high tech gadgets using a fast computers accessing a tech reporting organization through a worldwide network without the patent system? Because you wouldn't... you'd be at home picking your ass and complaining about stories in the newspaper you don't like. Well, I guess technology doesn't change some people that much.
Good Technology (owned by Visto) was the real innovator in push email devices/services. RIM just spun off them....