RIM's Patent Fight

It will be interesting to see the transcripts of RIM's 15 minutes in court yesterday as it battles NTP over patents apparently crucial to the Blackberry. This battle is already costing RIM millions of dollars in contingency and legal fees. The potential for a licensing agreement seems unlikely given that court-imposed talks between RIM and NTP went nowhere after RIM lost a lower court decision last year. While it could be a disaster if RIM loses, this case talks to a more important issue: the ability for individuals and/or companies to broadly apply patents against new technology. It is becoming increasingly obvious there is something wrong about how the U.S. Patent Office awards patents for technology that is a very slight modification to existing standards, and how patent holders have been allowed to make life difficult for companies coming up with new products. NTP's six patents, for example, cover technology involving “electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processors” The question is: do these patents encompass everything involving e-mail and wireless networks? If so, is it fair and would it keep product developers such as RIM from introducing great new products such as the Blackberry? Stay tuned….