When did getting found guilty at a jury trial and losing all of your appeals become extortion?
Without getting too off topic hear, recall that O.J. Simpson was found not-guilty of murder by one jury and liable for the same deaths by another. Regardless of which court was right, there's no question that our judicial system is not infallible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by birick
Many keep saying the judge rushed the case...isn't 4 years of appeals enough? Long (real long) ago I remember learning that the american legal system promises a "fair and speedy trial" How many years in a speedy?
Four years is not long enough if the basis for judgement is a patent process that takes even longer! All the NTP patents are being invalidated on the extremely slow review process of the patent office. How can it be fair for the courts to work faster than that?
Also, many of the NTP apologists here seem to be under the misconception that RIM "stole" the idea(s). The problem is that patents are not made public until after they are issued, but they are retroactively effective to their filing date. That means that two people can come up with the same idea independently and the one that files first is able to control the technology.
Also, the patents are being invalidated because they were not original ideas in the first place. The trouble is that the patent office is so overwhelmed with filings by companies like IBM and Microsoft (who each file hundreds of thousands of "trivial" patents each year) that they don't spend the proper time researching the filings before issuing the patents. They currently have the attitude of "let it get sorted out in court". Of course, when the courts value these ill researched patents so highly, there's a paradox that points to a completely broken system.
I'm curious to know if any of you that think that NTP deserves $600M+ feel our patent system works well?
Being an optimist these days :wink: I do see a silver lining to this dark cloud: This case might just cause the US Congress to give the process a much needed overhaul.
I'm curious to know if any of you that think that NTP deserves $600M+ feel our patent system works well?
I would have to say yes, $600M+ is a fair price for the technology that makes the multi-billion dollar product (Blackberry) what it is. It's a very small investment when you look at the possible returns.
However, the patent system is clearly FUBAR since it issues patents and then several years later, when the patent is in a court battle, they say maybe they will someday be invalidating these patents.
As a side note, several people have said that the courts need to look at whats right and morale not just the law. The right thing for RIM to do when they found out that they were using someone elses technology to make their product would have been to quickly negotiate an agreement and pay for the technolgy. It would have been cheaper in the long run I think.
Because you lay stake to "intellectual property" that you're not using, nor have any intent in doing so. Someone else whose intent is to make life easier are now denied their legimate needs, based on what we dictate to be "legally" right and wrong...
Are you saying that in order to own a patent I must be doing something with it and am not allowed to sit on it? I can buy real estate and do nothing for years with it. I only have an intention to build on it - someday.
I might be wrong but it seems to me that a patent is a tangible item such as a deed that can be traded. Just because of the fact that the patent office made it worth something. I agree that I cannot sue for liability or loss of business like NTP is doing but since I am the owner of that technology I have the right to license it to someone else. It could be that I saw a good buy but didn't have the money to create the worlds next big thing.
It was mentioned here more than a few times that the patent laws are outdated but according to the law today I own that technology ( I guess :? ). It seems that the only way to protect against this type of slimeball antics is to change the patent laws. Like Paragon mentioned before that it's becoming the new business model of today which is very scary indeed.
I'm curious to know if any of you that think that NTP deserves $600M+ feel our patent system works well?
That is a red herring. First of all, whether or not I think NTP was correct or not does not allow me to put a monetary value on it, so I couldn't support or refute the $600M. What would allow me to do that is have a sense of the standard royalty for this kind of technology, the projected lifespan of the product using the patent in question, the amount of revenues over said time period, etc. I know none of that. Second, our patent system can work great in my opinion and I can still disagree with this outcome, or I can like this outcome and still think the patent system is flawed.
Because you lay stake to "intellectual property" that you're not using, nor have any intent in doing so. Someone else whose intent is to make life easier are now denied their legimate needs, based on what we dictate to be "legally" right and wrong...
Are you saying that in order to own a patent I must be doing something with it and am not allowed to sit on it? I can buy real estate and do nothing for years with it. I only have an intention to build on it - someday.
I actually agree with this wholeheartedly, that you must do something with a patent. If you own a patent and don't do anything with it, then you are holding back technological advancement and society as a whole in the name of greed. As the old saying goes, "sh1t or get off the pot". If you don't do anything with it, then give it to someone who will. By "doing something with it", this includes coming to an agreement to share with someone who will. That is perfectly acceptable if this intention is clear from the start. If NTP had gone out looking for partners to work on this, all would be fine. But they didn't. They just waited. To lie in wait, then ambush someone with a patent violation as NTP has done is immoral and wrong. Legal, but wrong.
Its also ironic you bring up the land example because there are in fact emminent domain laws in the US that allow the government to take land from people in the interests of societal improvement. The Supreme Court in fact just held up an emminent domain case a while back. We do this with land, but not with ideas.
Oh, and Ed, by the way, just because we don't agree with your opinion on this doesn't make you the rational one and us a bunch of raving, illogical lunatics. No one is denying that NTP has the law on its side. At least not me. But the patent laws are clearly outdated and to urge changes so that what is currently lawful is changed to become right morally too is not crazy talk. There have been injustices throughout history that have only been corrected when "illogical ones" tried to urge changes.
In any case, I cannot believe that you truly believe that NTP has the right to $612 large ones based on invalid patents - that you believe that the court can't change it's rulings based on new evidence. I'm not a lawyer but I can't believe that there is precedent that allows the court to ignore pertinent new facts in a case. If there is, I'd like to see the judge's reasoning behind his ruling that the patent rejections by the patent office are "a separate issue" and not pertinent to the case.
Because you lay stake to "intellectual property" that you're not using, nor have any intent in doing so. Someone else whose intent is to make life easier are now denied their legimate needs, based on what we dictate to be "legally" right and wrong...
Are you saying that in order to own a patent I must be doing something with it and am not allowed to sit on it? I can buy real estate and do nothing for years with it. I only have an intention to build on it - someday.
I actually agree with this wholeheartedly, that you must do something with a patent. If you own a patent and don't do anything with it, then you are holding back technological advancement and society as a whole in the name of greed.
No you aren't. You are getting paid for your ingenuity. And that has nothing to do with this case anyway. A co-founder worked most of his life in wireless message delivery. Just because he wasn't a successful business man at it doesn't mean he was a squatter undeserving of any compensation.
Quote:
In any case, I cannot believe that you truly believe that NTP has the right to $612 large ones based on invalid patents - that you believe that the court can't change it's rulings based on new evidence. I'm not a lawyer but I can't believe that there is precedent that allows the court to ignore pertinent new facts in a case. If there is, I'd like to see the judge's reasoning behind his ruling that the patent rejections by the patent office are "a separate issue" and not pertinent to the case.
I never said the patents were valid, never said NTP should have been paid, never said $612.5M was a good number.
I am simply disagreeing with the "patent-squatting" meme.
As a side note, several people have said that the courts need to look at whats right and morale not just the law. The right thing for RIM to do when they found out that they were using someone elses technology to make their product would have been to quickly negotiate an agreement and pay for the technolgy. It would have been cheaper in the long run I think.
If someone came to your house one day demanding that they in fact owned your property, under which contained some rare mineral that, due to the passage of time, is worth less now than it did (thereby your living there is making them lose money by the day), and then demanded that you pay them an exorbant amount in damages -- how would you feel?
Quote:
Originally Posted by lapchinj
Are you saying that in order to own a patent I must be doing something with it and am not allowed to sit on it? I can buy real estate and do nothing for years with it. I only have an intention to build on it - someday.
It's a pickle isn't it. Obviously, taking such a stance has its own issues to contend with; but faced with such obvious abuse of the system, is there really any other way? And label me stubborn, but I don't see a scenario beyond idea-squatting for someone to invent something, lay intellectual ownership to it, but make no effort in distributing it to the market.
No you aren't. You are getting paid for your ingenuity. And that has nothing to do with this case anyway. A co-founder worked most of his life in wireless message delivery. Just because he wasn't a successful business man at it doesn't mean he was a squatter undeserving of any compensation.
I respectfully disagree. To me, claiming ownership of an idea, letting someone else go through the efforts of marketing it, and then going back to threaten legal action for their success, flies in the face of capitalism altogether. If you are not a good businessman, then pair up with someone who is. I'd go so far as to say that intellectual property should only be as valuable as their implementation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
I am simply disagreeing with the "patent-squatting" meme.
But that was exactly their intent.
Quote:
In 1992, Mr. Campana and Mr. Stout agreed to form NTP. The company was never about making things or selling things. It was about protecting potentially valuable ideas, some of which dealt with sending messages to wireless devices. And for nearly a decade, Mr. Campana's patents lay dormant, just waiting for RIM to produce the BlackBerry.
Campana couldn't implement it, so he decides to own it so that if someone else does a better job than him at implementing it, then they'll pay him a royalty. Arguably, some of those patents probably never saw the light of day in a board office; their feasibility never discussed, explored, or attempted.
I would begin my reminding everyone that the criminal and civil judicial systems are TOTALLY different. The basic principle behind the criminal law is the it's better to let a few guilty people go free (OJ) than to have an innocent person go to jail. Thus if someone is CONVICTED, you DO get to put in new exculpatory evidence and get a new trial in the criminal system. Which is why you get the occasional DNA evidence freeing falsly convicted person cases. The guiding principles are Fundamental justice and the search for the TRUTH (with a strong bias toward the defendant).
The civil law is based on the RULES of CIVIL PROCEDURE. Not JUSTICE. It's basically a game. File your papers late? You lose. Your case is thrown out no matter how worthy your cause was. RIM lost under the rules so they had to pay. Pretty simple. The issue of whether the patent rules suck is a separate one. I agree with everyone else (and I suspect that this includes Ed) that the patent laws do need to be changed. Whether this is a case of squatting or not, the current rules and review system create too much room for abuse.
The purpose of the current rules that allow for squatting were developed under the old industrial model. Under this system you could invent stuff and then not get ripped off just because necessary partners did not want to cooperate with you. A real life example is the creator of the intermittent windshield wiper. That poor sap created the technology when to the big three and then was summarilly turned away. Years later he went to the Japanese manufaturers who agreed to license his technology. If there was a use it or lose it rule, the big three could have turned the inventor away, waited few years and then used it themselves without paying the inventor a single penny. This would have been a tragedy and the lack of a use it or lose it rule is explained by this type of potential dynamic.
Frankly, I think that there should be a different type of patent system for high tech and biotech. They're totally different industries from the traditional business of the 19th and 20th centuries, and far more prone to patent abuse.
So for whether RIM paid a lot of money or not. They really didn't. The half a billion licensing fee was based on sales figures from four years ago. Over the last four years, RIM has grown astronomically. The 600 billion dollar settlement obviously took into consideration the fact that NTP's patents were on a weak footing.
If RIM really thought the patents were weak from the beginning they should sue their lawyers for ineffective assistance of counsel. They should have put pressure on the patent office for a review 8 years ago while the case was still winding through the courts rather than when they'd already lost the case and were desperately trying to figure out a way to survive without paying out any money. The patent office is pathetically understaffed but not so understaffed that they couldn't have looked at NTP's patents earlier. (big business should also use some of their considerable clout to get the patent office more resources. sometimes I think that LIKE the current state of chaos).
I actually agree with this wholeheartedly, that you must do something with a patent. If you own a patent and don't do anything with it, then you are holding back technological advancement and society as a whole in the name of greed. As the old saying goes, "sh1t or get off the pot". If you don't do anything with it, then give it to someone who will. By "doing something with it", this includes coming to an agreement to share with someone who will. That is perfectly acceptable if this intention is clear from the start. If NTP had gone out looking for partners to work on this, all would be fine. But they didn't. They just waited. To lie in wait, then ambush someone with a patent violation as NTP has done is immoral and wrong. Legal, but wrong.
I think this attitude would be acceptable in a perfect world where people will help people. But it seems that the law give someone the right to sit on his patent for as long as he is able to.
It would have been nice if NTP would have started screaming that RIM was using their patent without paying license fees. Maybe they did I really don't know but if it's legal then NTP can do it. Slimy but they can do it.
I would think that the patent law should be revised (if it doesn't state it already) that there is a grace period to scream patent infringement at an offending company. After that time limit is up the patent holder would loose its rights to the patent. This would protect against a company waiting in ambush until the infringing company is rolling in money. That would seem to fix most of the issues being discussed here. And this doodo or get off the pot paradigm would force companies to get off their butts and develop what bought or loose it :wink: .
Linear Mode
