Patent Office Rejects Important NTP Patent... A Day Late
from the oh-well,-next-time dept
Just a day after a judge in the NTP-RIM patent fight said that he would not wait for the US Patent Office to complete a review of NTP's patents, that same Patent Office announced a "non-final" ruling on one of the NTP patents, suggesting that the original patent might not be valid. If you've been keeping score, this is just the latest in a long line. Each of the NTP patent the Patent Office has reviewed has come back with serious questions about their validity. In this case, it's the second time this patent has been reviewed. While NTP still gets to respond, the USPTO made it clear that it's extremely unlikely that they'll change their mind. This is important, since RIM was only found guilty of infringing on two patents -- and this is one of them. The oddest part about this, however, is that the reason for finding the patent invalid was that the USPTO reviewed some prior art submitted by NTP's own lawyers -- who still claim that they will prevail in the end. It's not at all clear why they submitted the evidence that seems to discredit their own patents. Either way, the fact that the USPTO appears to have serious doubts as to whether or not these patents are valid seem like a pretty damn good reason for the court not to force RIM to pay out nearly a billion dollars. What happens if the patents are all eventually completely rejected? Does RIM get its money back?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
RIM sues NTP. The only people winning here are the lawyers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RIM, NTPpatents & settlement
Finally, has anyone heard re. the RIM work-around? I hear they are on the verge of deploying a solution whgich doesn't infringe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
link to the article, please ?
A link to the article, if possible, please ?
I would NEVER EVER sign such a clause for anything
at all, much less for 450mil.
It may take PTO 10 years to arrive to the final
conclusion, counting all the appeals...
The initial rejection of a patent by PTO is no
big deal, happens all the time.
Eolas patent was also initially rejected on re-examination, but finally has passed PTO scrutiny.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: link to the article, please ?
big deal, happens all the time.
Yeah, but this isn't an *initial* rejection. This is the second rejection of that patent, and the USPTO says it's very unlikely that any response from NTP will change that decision.
So, yes, it IS a big deal.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: link to the article, please ?
But, from my personal (and rather frustrating) experience with USPTO, I can only say for sure:
never say 'no' until it's actually over.
PTO is a mess, they need some serious quality reforms indeed...
Though in a high profile case like this they's better deploy their best resources and expedite proceedings...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BlackBerry Work-Around Finally Revealed
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BB "Push a link" workaround
[ link to this | view in thread ]