Comments on: Welcome to litigation land, 2006

CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says there's no joy in tech-dom after the RIM-NTP settlement.

[bigpicture]

Who to Blame

But as with all fiasco's there is the "Ultimate Responsibility" issue. If this had been a medical, error there would have been huge malpractice suits, and someone would be at fault.

This is a Governing System faux pas, so who should be at fault but the Government, for creating and not correcting flawed governing systems.

RIM should sue the US government for recovery of the $612M as wrongful losses, due to a flawed Patent System.

[battlefella]

Who to blame?

I wouldn't necessarily say the Patent system is to blame, but the legal system sure is. The Patent office is, slowly but surely, examining and correctly rejecting the NTP patents as invalid due to prior art. However, the legal system allows extortion and blackmail like that of NTP to not only succeed, but to do so with flying colours. The original 'failed' settlement between RIM and NTP involved a halt to payments if the NTP patents were deemed invalid; of course NTP didn't want this (since such a result was likely), and so they managed to extort their way through the courts to get more.

Funny part is all the 'analysts' that claimed that a settlement was the best thing RIM could do, and they should have done it long ago. Clearly the future of innovative technology never crossed their minds...

[micjohnson]

I still don't understand...

...Why RIM would settle if the patents got rejected. I haven't seen a good explanation of this anywhere yet! If the gov't says the patents are invalid, then what's the point of giving them six-hundred-plus million dollars?

[gggg sssss]

lawyers

What is it the say about lawyers and the bottom of the sea? This was just a bunch of ambulance chasing lawyers who worked the legal system to get an injunction that would have killed rim while waiting for the rest of the worthless patents to be invalidated. Will NTP give the money back when that happens? Technology innovation played no part in this.

[tophut]

Patents are valuable for Technology Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur running a small firm that has done technology development for 7 years, patents are an extremely valuable tool. In fact patents and their effective enforcement strongly favor technology entrepreneurs. Patents provide a primary protection that my company's limited investments in R&D doesn't get simply copied. The patent process thus encourages technology development.

Also, having worked directly with the USPTO on about 8 different applications, I think they overall do a good job. It is not easy to get broad patents. The countries where the majority of people live in the world effectively have zero patent protection available for technology entrepreneurs.

One of the best success stories of patents facilitating investment would be Qualcomm. It would have been much, much harder for them to take the risk and complete the initial development work for CDMA in the early '90s without lots of lawyers and patents. Their investment has really turned into the global standard for 3G.

This particular case was interesting enough that I looked through the RTP claims. Needless to say, the claims and case are extremely complex. It is very hard to say who was right, and without knowing the details of the case, I have to refrain from judgement. I can say that a strong patent system and methods of enforcing patents are critical for my business, and I would suspect for the wider US economy as well.

[tophut]

Patents are essential

As an entrepreneur running a small firm that has done technology development for 7 years, patents are an extremely valuable tool. In fact patents and their effective enforcement strongly favor technology entrepreneurs. Patents provide a primary protection that our limited investments in R&D doesn't get simply copied. The patent process thus encourages technology development. If you have a good patent that is valuable, you also really don't have to worry too much about lawyer bills.

Also, having worked directly with the USPTO on about 8 different applications, I think they overall do a good job. It is not easy to get broad patents. The countries where the majority of people live in the world effectively have zero patent protection available to technology entrepreneurs.

One of the best success stories of patents facilitating investment would be Qualcomm. It would have been much, much harder for them to take the risk and complete the initial development work for CDMA in the early '90s without lots of lawyers and patents. Their investment has really turned into the global standard for 3G.

This particular case was interesting enough that I looked through the RTP claims. Needless to say, the claims and case is extremely complex. It is very hard to say who was right, and without knowing the details of the case, I have to refrain from judgement. I can say that a strong patent system and methods of enforcing patents are critical for my business.