Nickname: T_Gobis

Review: I used to work for ESA as a Technician before they went bankrupt and as Gary Thelen stated in the article we were using the technology in the late 80's well before RIMM.

Date reviewed: Apr 25, 2007 2:35 PM

Nickname: Spork

Review: Copyright infringement only occurs in the event that an entity(a company, workgroup, even single consultant/contractor) expressly obtains and uses technology patented by another entity, with the purpose of financial gain. Just because RIM's technology has the same function doesn't mean it has the same design. I don't get what the patent actually covers, at that point.

Date reviewed: Nov 9, 2006 6:46 PM

Nickname: Meat

Review: The real tragedy in the RIM/NTP battle is that only the scummy lawyers and ingratiating relatives will get the payout. Hindsight shows that RIM should have hired Campanas as another "Dilbert"-style engineer who gets credit in the form of a pension plan. If technology dreams are patentable, Isaac Asimov should be paid a license fee for everything.

Date reviewed: Jan 31, 2006 5:20 PM

Nickname: Arindam

Review: Most certainly, a patent cannot be filed if the technology seems obvious to someone skilled in that field. The problem is that the distinction of something as "obvious" is somewhat fuzzy and a lot depends on individual discretion. I wonder if there ever will any definite solution.

Date reviewed: Dec 14, 2005 9:02 AM

Nickname: se

Review: Narayanan shows great 20-20 hindsight. If At&T was so attracted to ESA's paging technology and had to hire them to implement it this was no obvious technology. The purpose of a patent is to "Teach a new method or system," just dreaming that something is possible is not enough. For example it may be obvious and we can dream that all cars will fly one day. Yet one can get a patent for it only if one can teach a specifically new method that makes the dream possible.

Date reviewed: Dec 14, 2005 2:54 AM

Nickname: naveen

Review: The AT&T engineer's comment regarding the obviousness of putting e-mail and paging together is a very important one. Under patent law, a patent cannot be awarded if the invention is obvious to someone skilled in its art. Also, you cannot get a patent by making a combination of two patented inventions. If the AT&T guy was called in as someone skilled in this art , his testimony that combining e-mail and paging was obvious is a very important win for RIM and damaging for NTP. The problem with the U.S. Patent Office is that it doesn't have enough resources to do a good patent review before awarding a patent. I have seen a lot of "derivative" patents in my field, which are really obvious, not really something new at all and the patent should not have been awarded. However, once a patent is awarded, I can only fight in court to prove its obviousness.

Date reviewed: Dec 10, 2005 2:52 AM

Nickname: Please

Review: Please, while I feel bad for any company (especially small ones) that have their innovations stolen my view is NTP is just a patent troll. Did they build anything of value with this patent? And what about all the other patents that NTP has either filed or purchased without actually building anything? Seems like a troll to me.

Date reviewed: Dec 9, 2005 4:37 AM

Nickname: Jim

Review: Interesting comment from former AT&T engineer: "putting e-mail and paging seemed obvious to me." Why didn't he or another visionary come forward with and protect their intellectual capital with a patent? The patent protection exists to encourage and support the next breakthough idea, enabling our society's living standard to continue to evolve. The visionary should keep dreaming without the worry a large corporate cash rich entity could roll them over. Deep pockets is very formidable much like Goliath appeared to David. Hope the results are the same!

Date reviewed: Dec 9, 2005 4:22 AM

Nickname: Arindam

Review: While it is true that it takes lot more than mere inception to make a product successful in the market, I feel banking your success on someone's else's intellectual property is still ethically and politically incorrect and should still be dealt with harshly so as not to have repeat performances in the future. RIM is definitely under the gun but the law has to judge how much should NTP benefit from it. NTP never showed enough promise to market the concept the way RIM did and had NTP licenced the product to another company or marketed the concept themselves, I doubt they would have been as successful as BlackBerry. I'm most certainly doubtful of their $1 billion claim.

Date reviewed: Dec 9, 2005 3:58 AM

Nickname: look at the reality of it all

Review: If RIM is allowed to continue to drag this out after losing every round, many other companies will have to think seriously about all their R&D spending. Without enforceable patents, you can bet the pipeline for new products, from cool technology to life saving drugs will wither away and we will hand the keys to the kingdom to low-cost producers who copy everything from software to designer handbags. Wake up!

Date reviewed: Dec 9, 2005 1:24 AM