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

Patent Battles Continue Over Wireless Email

from the make-it-stop dept

While RIM is often portrayed as a victim for having to pay out $612.5 million in the patent infringement lawsuit filed by patent holding firm NTP, what gets less attention is that part of what kicked off NTP's lawsuit was the fact that RIM itself was going around suing pretty much everyone for patent infringement itself. And, of course, that kicked off all sorts of copycats, such as Visto -- a company that clearly learned the art of wielding patents against more successful companies from NTP. Visto and RIM ended up in quite the patent battle, with Visto even claiming that RIM should be shut down.

But, in the end, rather than the other way around, it turned out that it was Visto that was found to be infringing on RIM's patents. At this point, though, hasn't anyone realized how ridiculous it is that there are so many companies claiming to hold patents on some aspect of "wireless email" that no one can enter the space without having a bunch of infringement lawsuits waiting for them? This is not what the patent system was designed for.

Filed Under: email, patents, wireless
Companies: rim, visto