Can Any Smartphone Survive The Patent Gantlet?

from the perhaps-not... dept

With the news coming out that the US International Trade Commission (ITC) has agreed to investigate both RIM and Apple over patent claims brought by Kodak, it makes you wonder if we'll soon be able to have any smartphones at all. As you hopefully know the ITC process is a sneaky loophole used by patent holders to get two totally unrelated shots at putting the same company on trial for infringing on the same patents. There's the regular court process, and then there's the ITC, who can't fine companies, but can issue injunctions barring the import of the products. This process is regularly abused for anti-competitive purposes. Of course, there are other, similar charges that the ITC is reviewing as well, and it begins to make you wonder if any smartphone can actually "survive" this process.

Pretty much all smartphones are made outside of the US, so they can all be barred by the ITC, and with the technology in your average smartphone being covered by hundreds of patents, it's almost certain that every smartphone infringes on a slew of patents. Obviously, it's unlikely that anything will ever result in a full import ban on any particular phone -- the second that happened, the company would just give up and pay a ton of cash to make the complaining company go away -- but it does highlight what a wasteful process this is, and how it's taking good money away from actual innovation in smartphones and having it go towards stunts like this.

Filed Under: itc, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, rim

Can't Innovate? Litigate! Kodak Goes After Apple, RIM For Patent Infringement In Both Courts And ITC

from the but-of-course dept

We actually had some high hopes for Kodak not to go down this road, as it had shown some desire to actually focus on innovation, rather than going the litigation route, but apparently that wasn't working. As a bunch of you have sent in, Kodak has decided to go after both Apple and RIM for patent infringement -- and like so many these days, it's going for a double dip by filing a lawsuit in the courts and separately using the ITC loophole as well. How often do we see this? A company with a legacy business that is under threat of innovation... and it suddenly starts focusing on patent lawsuits rather than concentrating on actually adapting. Sure, it can try to do both at once, but it's rare to see that happen. Once the company breaks out the patent lawsuits, it's almost screaming out that its innovation efforts aren't very successful.

Filed Under: innovation. litigation, itc, loophole, patents
Companies: apple, kodak, rim

RIM Pays Out Again Over Patents

from the how-dare-you-try-to-do-wireless-email dept

The patent battle between RIM and NTP is considered something of landmark in alerting politicians and the general public to just how ridiculous the patent situation is these days. There was, however, an interesting sidenote on this. As part of its attempt to show that its own patents were valid, NTP convinced a couple other companies to "license" the patents -- except the details showed that NTP "invested" in each of these companies at the same time. That certainly looks like NTP paying a company to license its patents, just to make it looks like there were some legitimate licensees. Two of the companies that NTP did this with were Visto and Good Technology. Having licensed NTP's patents, Visto, at least, took a lesson from NTP and became an aggressive player in the patent lawsuit game, trying to mimic NTP's success by suing RIM as well.

There is no way to describe this other than sour grapes. Visto tried to play in the market and was a pretty big (and massively expensive) failure. RIM, on the other hand, was able to create a product that people wanted and build a good business on it. This wasn't by copying Visto's (or NTP's) ideas, but better understanding the actual market and creating a good product itself. Visto failed to do that. So, in turn, it just sued and demanded cash from the company that was able to innovate. Recently, Visto also purchased Good Technology (another NTP licensee) from Motorola (who had purchased it earlier), likely adding more patents to the portfolio.

Either way, it looks like RIM has finally grown tired of the game and has agreed to pay Visto $267.5 million. It's less than the amount NTP got, but it's still a hefty chunk of change. And, for what? For being the loser in the market place. This is a tax on innovation. The loser in the marketplace forces the winner to hand over a nice chunk of profits. It's bad for everyone (except some lawyers and Visto shareholders).

Filed Under: innovation, patents, wireless email
Companies: good technology, rim, visto

Finland Agrees To Let Companies Spy On Workers

from the who-needs-trust-when-you-have-technology? dept

Last month, we noted the controversy in Finland, as a new law was up for debate concerning whether or not companies there could spy on employee email. Beyond the general controversy, there were rumors that Nokia, who had been caught breaking the existing law by spying on employee emails before, had supposedly threatened to leave Finland if the law wasn't changed to allow such activities. Nokia has vehemently denied this, but hasn't denied that it supported the law. So... it's probably not a huge surprise that the Finnish Parliament has approved the law.

To be honest, the details of the law aren't that extreme. It doesn't let the company even read the emails -- just record who is emailing whom. For company email, that seems perfectly reasonable. Hell, the day this law passed, RIM admitted not only does it track and record all company email, but it does the same thing for all phone calls as well. Perhaps a more important question is whether or not that's a useful way to spend company resources? The companies obviously talk about the importance of "protecting" their IP, but I once worked for a company that recorded all phone calls as well, and all it really did was make all of the employees angry, disgruntled and less interested in working hard. Having your bosses distrust you can do that...

Filed Under: employees, finland, spying
Companies: nokia, rim

Motorola Trying To Block Competitors From Hiring Workers It Laid Off

from the insult-to-injury dept

We already think that noncompete agreements don't make sense for companies, but Motorola may be taking the concept to a new level. Rather than trying to stop employees from leaving Motorola to go to a competitor, it's now trying to stop employees it already laid off from going to work for RIM. Motorola had already sued RIM earlier this year for trying to entice employees to jump ship, and this followed another suit by Motorola against Apple for hiring away an exec. Maybe rather than trying to prevent employees from going elsewhere, Motorola might want to focus on improving its own offerings and its own working conditions so that this isn't even a problem? But if it's laying people off, it seems rather ridiculous to then try to stop them from joining another company.

Filed Under: hiring, laid off, noncompetes
Companies: motorola, rim

Economy Not So Bad That People Won't Line Up To Buy A New Gadget

from the phone-lines,-not-breadlines dept

So, the economy is collapsing, consumer spending is way down, banks and auto companies are on the verge of going out of business, unemployment is up, foreclosures are up, and some might have you believe that we're heading back to Great Depression style bread and soup lines. Luckily, it looks like we're not quite there yet, as plenty of folks seemed willing to line up, not for some free grub, but to get the latest hot new phone, the Blackberry Storm. Apparently, we haven't quite entered Great Depression territory yet.

Filed Under: blackberry storm, economy, lines
Companies: rim

Patent Battles Focusing On Third Parties To Push For Settlements

from the trying-to-force-a-settlement dept

Two recent patent battle lawsuits made news this week, and both highlighted one troubling aspect of patent lawsuits: patent holders trying to damage others beyond the company that infringed. Now, before the patent system defenders rush to post angry comments, this is not a new thing. It's been quite common for a while. Nor is it surprising. If you were a patent attorney representing one of these patent holders, you'd probably do the same thing: going after third parties is probably a good strategy to force the other company to settle. However, it does highlight how patent law is used in ways that clearly are outside of its intended purpose. That is, it's being used to punish plenty of innocent third parties by removing innovation from their grasps, rather than encouraging innovation.

The first case involves a patent lawsuit concerning Microsoft's Visual Studio. WebXchange claims it has patents that Visual Studio violates -- but rather than suing Microsoft, WebXchange sued three Microsoft customers, claiming that by using the software, they were violating the patent. This is clearly an attempt to scare Microsoft into settling, out of a fear that other customers won't use Visual Studio to avoid getting sued by WebXchange. Microsoft is fighting back, asking a judge to declare the patents invalid, but in the meantime, WebXchange has been able to drag Microsoft's customers into a patent battle, putting extra pressure on Microsoft to settle.

The second case involves Spansion suing Samsung for patent infringement concerning Samsung's memory chips. In this case, Spansion isn't just going after Samsung, but demanding an injunction that would block US sales of a variety of popular gadgets that use Samsung's memory chips -- including iPods and Blackberries. Once again, while it's unlikely that a court would order such a block, by dragging other companies such as Apple and RIM into the mess, Spansion is abusing the patent system's threat of an injunction to put extra pressure on Samsung to settle.

Filed Under: patents, settlements, third parties
Companies: apple, dell, fedex, microsoft, rim, samsung, spansion, webxchange

RIM Sued Yet Again For Patent Infringement

from the maybe-you-shouldn't-have-kicked-up-all-that-dust dept

While most people think of just the NTP lawsuit when they hear about RIM and patent infringement troubles, what's often left out of the discussion is that prior to the NTP suit, RIM was one of the more aggressive companies in filing patent infringement lawsuits against everyone else. In fact, it was news articles about RIM's aggressive patent enforcement strategy that convinced the guys behind NTP to file their lawsuit in the first place. Since paying $612.5 million to NTP to settle that battle, other patent holders have been lining up to sue RIM as well.

Earlier this year, we wrote about another aggressive patent enforcer, Wi-LAN, which sued RIM for infringement. RIM, once again, settled -- indicating a bit of an open season. If you happen to have a patent that RIM might sorta possibly infringe on, why not sue?

The latest to step up to bat is Mformation, who has sued RIM for two separate patents which are both about remote management of a wireless device (Patent 1 and Patent 2). Whatever the merits of the case, all of this has to make you wonder if RIM regrets its decision to kick off the process of suing lots of companies for patent infringement. It seems that the blowback was a lot worse than any benefit.

Filed Under: lawsuits, patents, stockpiling
Companies: mformation, ntp, rim, wi-lan

Dear Motorola: Instead Of Suing Competitors, Maybe Figure Out Why Employees Are Leaving

from the blame-everyone-else dept

As a company, if things aren't going well, it's often difficult to accept that some of the blame may be on your end -- which makes it especially easy to lash out at competitors, assigning blame to them. This becomes troublesome when it starts to involve lawsuits. Just a couple months ago, we noted that Motorola was suing a former exec for jumping ship to Apple. And, now the company is suing RIM for getting a bunch of Motorola employees to leave Motorola and join RIM. To any outsider, it seems clear that Motorola has some problems that make it so employees are tempted to jump to other companies. But rather than focus on figuring out how to fix that, and make things such that employees want to stick around (making cooler phones might be a good place to start), it's lashing out at competitors who are more appealing to Motorola's own employees. In the meantime, Motorola might want to check out the research that shows the free flow of employees between competitors helps spread innovation across the entire market. In other words, stop suing people because your employees are leaving, and start figuring out ways to make employees want to work for you.

Filed Under: employees, mobile phones
Companies: apple, motorola, rim

NTP Can't Leave Well Enough Alone Concerning RIM

from the the-money-wasn't-enough? dept

In one of the biggest travesties of the patent system, over two years ago, RIM agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million for patent infringement, even though the USPTO had been rejecting NTP's patents on re-exam. The patents were highly questionable: extremely broad patents covering pretty basic concepts about making email "wireless." Beyond combining two existing ideas in a rather obvious way, there was a fair amount of prior art as well. Yet, under pressure from both the judge and its own shareholders, RIM decided it was worth paying out over half a billion dollars rather than dealing with the potential uncertainty of an injunction forcing it to shut down its service.

You would think that this would have kept NTP happy. After all, NTP was basically built out of the ashes of a company that had failed in the marketplace. It was unable to come up with a product that anyone wanted. RIM, on the other hand, had done the real innovation of figuring out what customers actually wanted, and packaging it in an appealing manner. All that was left at NTP was a bunch of lawyers, who now had $612.5 million for failing in the marketplace.

But NTP won't stop. It's kept suing a bunch of other companies. However, the courts have put its latest lawsuits on hold while the USPTO continues to review the legitimacy of NTP's patents (why RIM wasn't allowed the same consideration has never been explained).

So now NTP is taking another strategy: claiming that RIM unfairly influenced the Patent Office's re-exam of its patents. Yes, the company already won the lawsuit and $612.5 million, but is still claiming that the other side cheated. Of course, there's not much "there" there in the accusations. Basically, RIM had representatives who tried to find out what was happening at the USPTO and what the process was for the re-exam. As various patent attorneys outline towards the end of the article, it doesn't appear that RIM did anything wrong here, but NTP is doing whatever it can to try to bloody RIM, even given the fact that it won the lawsuit. What we're seeing here is a case of extreme rent-seeking, where NTP will do pretty much anything to try to keep milking its highly questionable patents, diverting hundreds of millions away from innovation and into the pockets of folks who failed in the marketplace.

Filed Under: patents, re-exam, uspto
Companies: ntp, rim