Why the Blackberry Lawsuit doesn't add up

Within the next month, the Blackberry Lawsuit should be 100% settled. Recently, a date of February 24th was set as the date where it will be decided if an injunction is needed and how much RIM owes NTP.

If you don't know, a Blackberry is a wireless device that people use to check email. Sounds simple enough, but they are so addictive they have earned the nickname "CrackBerry". NTP, a Virginia based company, is suing Research in Motion (RIM, the makers of Blackberries) for patent infringement. This article, while being dated and not having the most recent events of the past two months, describes the history of the case pretty well. Essentially, the suit has gone back and forth of the past few years. At some point there was a settlement, then the settlement fell through. Then there was an injunction, which was appealed and revoked.

Now the case is in the Supreme Court. Some predict RIM and NTP will settle before the February 24th date, and the settlement is likely to be somewhere between 450 million and 1 billion dollars (the original "settlement" was 250 million). The Supreme Court will also decide whether or not to serve an injunction, meaning that Blackberry's would have to basically shut off within 30 days of the ruling.

Now that we're all clear on the history, here's why this suit doesn't add up:

1. Who cares if the patents are valid? So the US Supreme Court is going to rule on February 24th if RIM has infringed on NTP's packets. Great, except that 4 days later the Patent and Trade Commission (PTC) is going to rule if the patents are even valid in the first place. In about the only good thing that has happened to RIM in this case recently, the PTC has decided to review NTP's patents, "and as of September 2005 had preliminarily invalidated all 1,921 claims in the eight pertinent NTP patents, including all those that form the basis for NTP's suit." (I highly suggest that last article, so I'm going to link it again) So naturally, you would think that no ruling should be made until the PTC decides whether or not the patents are valid, right? Well, one of RIM's many appeals was that the Supreme Court wait until after the February 28th PTC ruling (yes, that's right, 4 whole days), but this appeal was rejected.
   
2. You shouldn't use technology that infringes on people's patents... Unless you are the government - One of RIM's biggest customers happens to be the United States government. The US Government is now filling papers in this case as a third party, saying that should an injunction happen, government workers Blackberry devices must continue to work and be exempt from the injunction. I do not need to point out the troubling irony (but I will) that the United States government, or more specifically the CIA and FBI, are evidently totally reliant on this foreign company (that's true, Canada isn't REALLY foreign. I mean they have a conservative government now too).
   
3. But what do you REALLY want? Try to follow this logic with me for a moment: NTP wants money from RIM. RIM makes money from Blackberries. If Blackberries cannot operate or be sold, RIM doesn't make money. If RIM doesn't make money, NTP can't take it. Herego, NTP doesn't want an injunction, right?
4. I'm taking my patents and I'm going home! - It is of couse possible that NTP doesn't want RIM competing with their products. Take a moment to go to NTP's website and see the products they make. Find the site? I had trouble too. I think it's here, but I'm admittedly not sure, because all this site has is an under construction logo as of this post. Anyway, as far as anyone can tell, NTP does not have any products. They have not licensed their patents to anyone else. So they aren't losing any money because of RIM. They have had these patents since 1992; TEN years before they sued RIM. Isn't there some statute of limitations that you have to use a patent or risk losing it? Didn't we learn this in Computers in Society? Didn't the professor mention this somewhere between her babbling about how she and Bob Dylan went on a date to Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream" speech and her claim that Microsoft is going patent your brain so you can't use it without their permission?

That last line was an inside joke, and a story for another entry...