RIM Loses Another Patent Case, Told To Pay $147.2 Million
from the live-by-the-patent,-die-by-the-patent dept
Perhaps one of the most famous patent lawsuits -- which really highlighted the whole patent troll problem -- was the case of NTP vs. RIM, which ended with RIM paying over $600 million to settle the case, even as the USPTO was rejecting NTP's patents. Since then, RIM has been involved in a number of other patent lawsuits as well, including one that it lost last week against "Mformation Technologies." RIM has been told to pay up another $147.2 million in this case.Of course, what some people forget is that RIM brought much of this on itself. Before NTP even came on the scene, it was RIM who started suing a bunch of other companies for patent infringement, based on its broad portfolio of patents around wireless email and mobile devices. On top of all that, RIM's business is collapsing. The company is fighting for relevancy as its latest operating system has been delayed -- and there's growing evidence that even once it comes out, no one's going to care about it.
RIM can try to put a nice spin on things, but it seems clear that the company is in serious trouble. Perhaps, next time, it will focus on improving its products more than getting caught up in the patent game. Yes, many of these more recent lawsuits came from it getting sued, but there's no doubt that RIM drew a lot of attention to itself early on with its own patent lawsuits against others.
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
Filed Under: patent troll, uspto
Companies: mformation technologies, ntp, rim
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It is certainly true that "there's no doubt that RIM drew a lot of attention to itself early on with its own patent lawsuits against others," but it does not logically follow that they were sued by trolls because they trolled others. I think that sort of thing is beneath you, Mr. Masnick.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_In_Motion#Patent_litigation
As Mike noted back in 2002...
"It is early days in the wireless data market so such legal battles should come as no surprise. But maybe RIM should consider finding a way to settle quickly and license their patents to infringers. The market is big enough to support all the current players and in fact needs as many players as possible to take off."
And look at the landscape we have now, companies using patents of questionable value to block competitors products, or forcing them to be made less useful.
The answer seems to always be sue early, sue often, and gobble up any patents you can to create a wedge you can attack competitors with rather than compete. Much of the patent wars we are having to deal with now are over tiny little pieces of an overall picture that aren't going to sway end users if you build a better machine.
Is slide to unlock really worth millions? Or is it just a way to make sure the other guy is blocked from the market, killing innovation and hurting the overall market as more money is spent on legal fees than development.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
I think the issue is that that is what competition is now. If you don't have nukes, you can't win the arms race.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Rather than spending money making sure it works correctly out of the box, or has a neat new feature they devote more money to making sure the other guy can't have something remotely similar.
Competition used to be about making the better widget, now its about spending the most money on lawyers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As far as phones go....
Low wattage intel x86 chip, with Linux or Windows, is the shit that will get people caring.
But these patents are ridiculous.
If you told me they were a conspiracy, created to pay less tax, I would believe it. It's not like the patents make more sense as is.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The practice is so wide spread and bizarre to individuals not schooled in construction project matters and legal issues that it is beyond comprehension.
Since the practice is wide spread with firms outside the US as well as with US firms and that most of these firms are privately owned one can only conclude that there are some wide spread tax issues that are avoided since the ownership of the support firms is in most cases identical to the ownership of the biding firm.
With corporate structure in the construction and ship transportation industries as bizarre as Hollywood entertainment's structure maybe the real issue is not pattens, copy right, licensing, but something more fundamental such as government tax policy and corporate legal liability. Maybe the pattens and copyright issues are only the visual part of a much bigger corporate finance and ethics issue.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I feel bad now....
Back in the day, the mid 90's, I used this little beauty whilst I was travelling all over the world (http://www.apj.co.uk/pc110/pt_travel.htm). I was given it by my then employer as he preferred the Libretto. When I was given the PC110, it had on it Windows95 with Lotus Notes on the removable hard drive.
I spent the best part of 7 months - on and off - going through rafts of backups to find the Notes installation, but failed. Shame as it would definitely have demonstrated what RIM were trying to show.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Interesting times we are living, interesting times.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
another biased article
Call it what you will...patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, shell company, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to pay or stop”. This is just dissembling by large infringers and their paid puppets to kill any inventor support system. It is purely about legalizing theft. The fact is, many of the large multinationals who defame inventors in this way themselves make no products in the US or create any American jobs and it is their continued blatant theft which makes it impossible for the true creators to do so.
Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the Supreme Court decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Essentially, large infringers now have your gun and all the bullets. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now some of those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked their chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back in the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all inventors, large and small.
Those wishing to help fight big business giveaways should contact us as below and join the fight as we are building a network of inventors and other stakeholders to lobby Congress to restore property rights for all patent owners -large and small.
For the truth about trolls, please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html#pt.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
way of the patent troll?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]