NTP Can't Leave Well Enough Alone Concerning RIM
Date : 19 Aug 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
In one of the biggest travesties of the patent system, over two years ago, RIM agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million for patent infringement, even though the USPTO had been rejecting NTP's patents on re-exam. The patents were highly questionable: extremely broad patents covering pretty basic concepts about making email "wireless." Beyond combining two existing ideas in a rather obvious way, there was a fair amount of prior art as well. Yet, under pressure from both the judge and its own shareholders, RIM decided it was worth paying out over half a billion dollars rather than dealing with the potential uncertainty of an injunction forcing it to shut down its service.
You would think that this would have kept NTP happy. After all, NTP was basically built out of the ashes of a company that had failed in the marketplace. It was unable to come up with a product that anyone wanted. RIM, on the other hand, had done the real innovation of figuring out what customers actually wanted, and packaging it in an appealing manner. All that was left at NTP was a bunch of lawyers, who now had $612.5 million for failing in the marketplace.
But NTP won't stop. It's kept suing a bunch of other companies. However, the courts have put its latest lawsuits on hold while the USPTO continues to review the legitimacy of NTP's patents (why RIM wasn't allowed the same consideration has never been explained).
So now NTP is taking another strategy: claiming that RIM unfairly influenced the Patent Office's re-exam of its patents. Yes, the company already won the lawsuit and $612.5 million, but is still claiming that the other side cheated. Of course, there's not much "there" there in the accusations. Basically, RIM had representatives who tried to find out what was happening at the USPTO and what the process was for the re-exam. As various patent attorneys outline towards the end of the article, it doesn't appear that RIM did anything wrong here, but NTP is doing whatever it can to try to bloody RIM, even given the fact that it won the lawsuit. What we're seeing here is a case of extreme rent-seeking, where NTP will do pretty much anything to try to keep milking its highly questionable patents, diverting hundreds of millions away from innovation and into the pockets of folks who failed in the marketplace.
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You would think that this would have kept NTP happy. After all, NTP was basically built out of the ashes of a company that had failed in the marketplace. It was unable to come up with a product that anyone wanted. RIM, on the other hand, had done the real innovation of figuring out what customers actually wanted, and packaging it in an appealing manner. All that was left at NTP was a bunch of lawyers, who now had $612.5 million for failing in the marketplace.
But NTP won't stop. It's kept suing a bunch of other companies. However, the courts have put its latest lawsuits on hold while the USPTO continues to review the legitimacy of NTP's patents (why RIM wasn't allowed the same consideration has never been explained).
So now NTP is taking another strategy: claiming that RIM unfairly influenced the Patent Office's re-exam of its patents. Yes, the company already won the lawsuit and $612.5 million, but is still claiming that the other side cheated. Of course, there's not much "there" there in the accusations. Basically, RIM had representatives who tried to find out what was happening at the USPTO and what the process was for the re-exam. As various patent attorneys outline towards the end of the article, it doesn't appear that RIM did anything wrong here, but NTP is doing whatever it can to try to bloody RIM, even given the fact that it won the lawsuit. What we're seeing here is a case of extreme rent-seeking, where NTP will do pretty much anything to try to keep milking its highly questionable patents, diverting hundreds of millions away from innovation and into the pockets of folks who failed in the marketplace.
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