PTO Bozos
The real story in the BlackBerry lawsuit isn't even being looked at - the utter absurdity of the patent at issue. Here's the story from the point of view of the outfit that went after RIM:
He caught his breath when he saw the RIM story. For a decade, Mr. Stout and his long-time client, Chicago inventor Thomas Campana Jr., had been patiently sitting on a batch of patents for a system to send text messages from computers to wireless devices.
Knockoffs. Amateurs. Who was RIM kidding? That's our technology, Mr. Stout thought. He picked up the phone, setting off an improbable chain of events that has ignited one of the most celebrated intellectual property showdowns in U.S. history. The fateful call put two proud inventors -- one Canadian and one American -- on a collision course that goes to the essence of what it means to develop something new, claim it as yours and then make it wildly popular, even indispensable.
So Campana claimed it's some kind of innovation that he figured out - apparently all by himself - that if a wireless device is on a network - then gosh! You can use SMTP to direct email messages to an address, and the client device can use POP (or IMAP) to yank them down. Wow - I'm so glad he came up with that, and even happier that some uninformed yutz at the PTO handed him a "poach on the industry for free" card. RIM is no better here; they wanted to be the same kind of gatekeeper, and just ended up on the short end of the stick.
Is minimal technical literacy too hard to ask for at the PTO? I guess so.
Comments
Minimal technical literacy?
[Larry Borsato] January 29, 2006 22:05:03.190
Let's see. He filed the patent in 1991. TCP/IP was less common at the time than Novell SPX, except on UNIX machines. SMTP, POP, and IMAP were hardly common. And though pagers existed, I can't think of a single network connected wireless device. The BlackBerry wouldn't exist until 1999. So in 1991, a method for pushing email to a wireless device sure would have been a pretty new and novel concept. RIM didn't come up with the idea until almost a decade later. If it wasn't new and novel in 1991, the why was RIM able to get a patent years later? Everything is always obvious after you've seen it done.
Ummm
[ James Robertson] January 30, 2006 0:01:54.704
Comment by James Robertson
"SMTP, POP, and IMAP were hardly common."
Hardly common is not the same thing as non-existant. The PTO 's job is to know about stuff like that.
Problem is with "novel"
[ Terry] January 30, 2006 8:15:33.648
Comment by Terry
I think much of the problem with software patents is with the definition of "novel". As I see it, many of the patents are abstract extensions of something that already exists. Personally I do not consider these to be "novel". As James said, if you have a device connected to the network and it understands an email protocol, you can even use uucp, then you can send email to it.
My other pet peeve with US patents are the submarine patents. It seems to me that the date for prior art should be the date the patent is applied for and not the date of invention. Particularly when you consider that many inventions occur because there is a need for them and as such it is just a matter of time before someone else reinvents it. So, someone should not be allowed to sit on a potential patent so the market can develop before they apply for the patent.