Blackberry Patent Dispute
Many businesses are faced with legal issues that can negatively affect their operations. Patent infringement lawsuits are reoccurring and appear to be a common legal issue among the technology industry. For the purpose of this paper I will discuss a patent legal dispute as it pertains to a recently settled lawsuit between Blackberry's manufacture, Research In Motion (RIM) and NTP, a small patent holding company. In addition, this paper will also discuss the court process and structure as well as the NTP and RIM legal dispute resolution.
In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form. The holder of this legal entitlement is generally entitled to exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP (http://en.wikepedia.org).
Patents, trademarks and designs fall into a particular subset of intellectual property known as industrial property (http://en.wikepedia.org).
Patent disputes have increased with the growth of the Technology industry. According to Mohammed, the Blackberry dispute is the latest in a string of patent disputes that have cast a shadow over corporate technology users (Mohammed, 2006). In order to understand the validity of such a dispute one must first understand patents and patent infringement:
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a person for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. The exclusive right granted a patentee is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the claimed invention. The rights given to the patentee do not include the right to make, use, or sell the invention themselves. The patentee may have to comply with other laws and regulations to make use of the claimed invention. (http://en.wikepedia.org)
"A patent provides the proprietor of that patent with the right to exclude others from utilizing the invention claimed in that patent. If the invention is utilized without the permission of the patent proprietor, the patent is considered infringed" (http://en.wikepedia.org). Patent infringement can be considered direct, indirect, or active inducement of infringement.
In 1990 Thomas Campana Jr., an engineer and co owner of NTP Inc., the patent holding company, says he developed technology that transmits data through radio frequency, long before the Internet became an integral part of American life (Locy, 2006).
(7) Hall B. Patents and Patent Policy -. 2007. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the Morse H. SETTLEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DISPUTES IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL AND MEDICAL DEVICE INDUSTRIES: ANTITRUST RULES. Allison JR, Lemley MA, Moore KA, Trunkey RD. Valuable patents. Geol.
Lehman, Bruce. 2003. “The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Patent System”. International Intellectual Property Institute. Pages 1-14.
BlackBerry timeline: A look back at the tech company’s history. n.d. 14 01 2014. .
According to our textbook, “Real property constitutes land and all things permanently attached to it (i.e. a house, a tree or coal below land). Intellectual property such as copyrights, patents and trademarks is personally owned but generally treated as a separate form of property by the law. Personal property is characterized by its portable nature; it can be carried from place to place (i.e. tangible personal property or intangible personal property)” (Roger, 2012).
Intellectual Property Law used to only protect art, music, and literature, but because of technological development, Intellectual Property Law now also protects a greater variety of innovations including designs, inventions, symbols, discoveries, and words. The phrase “intellectual property” was first known to be used in the late 1700’s; however, it was not widely talked about, nor was the Intellectual Property Law in actuality commonly implemented. Intellectual Property Rights slowly gained more attention by mid-1800’s after the Industrial Revolution had taken place: more companies were created, competition between corporations became fiercer, and owning unique innovations were crucial to winning the competition. However, as Intellectual Property
Intellectual property abounds in our society, it is the direct result of the expression of an idea or other intangible material (Zuber, 2014). Our laws provide rights which are specific to the owner of the intellectual property. Furthermore, intellectual property is protected by laws just like tangible property is protected (Lau & Johnson, 2014). The most widely known forms of intellectual property rights include: trade secrets for confidential information, patents for a process/invention, copyrights for creative items and trademarks for brands (Lau & Johnson, 2014). While these rights may appear very defined, there are times when questions
Being engulfed in a competitive market could be an overwhelming and challenging experienced for any company. The compatibility of Blackberry did not match the standards of other competitive operating systems. Even the acquisition of QNX could not help Blackberry tap in the lucrative market to stay afloat.
Blackberry lost focus on its core business and consequently lost its position as the “Business phone” market leader. Its Market-Share of the smartphone shrank from>21% to below 1%.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, Intellectual property is the ‘products of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, any symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce’. Intellectual Properties such as Patents, designs, trademarks and copyrights are protected by laws. The US government offers different types of protection for these properties. The Lanham Act (15 U.S.C.A. Section 1051 et seq., also known as the Trademark Act of 1946, provides protection for trademarks. A trademark is defined as a name, word, symbol, or device or any combination thereof, adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify its goods and distinguish them from those manufactured and sold by others.
Intellectual property is property resulting from intellectual, creative processes. A product that was created because of someone’s individual thought process. Examples includes books, designs, music, art work, and computer files. (Miller R. J., 2011, p. 114) In the music industry a copyright is an important tool for artist to use to protect themselves from infringers. A copyright is the exclusive right of an author or originator of a literary or artistic production to publish, print, or sell that production for a statutory period of time. A copyright has the same monopolistic nature as a patent or trademark, but it differs in that it applies exclusively to works of art, literature, and other works of authorship (including computer programs). (Miller R. J., 2011, p. 125)
Because of its intangible nature, and particularly the increase of the digital domain and the internet as a whole, computers and cyber piracy make it easier for people to steal many forms of intellectual property. Due to this major threat, intellectual property rights owners’ should take every single measure to protect their rights. Unless these rights are either sold, exchanged, transferred, or appropriately licensed for use in exchange for a monetary fee, they should be protected at all cost. In order to protect these rights, the federal and states governments have passed numerous laws and statutes to protect intellectual property from misappropriation and infringement. “The source of federal copyright and patent law originates with the Copyright and Patent ...
As we said above patents grant exclusive rights to an invention or a process of making and invention. So what does a patent cover? Chemical patents cover the structure of a molecule and also the process in which the molecule is made. This is a good thing for pharmaceutical companies who take out these patents as they can regulate the market. Because these companies own the rights of a molecule or drug exclusively they can restrict competition from competitors. Companies that have patents on drugs have the added benefit that they are the sole distributor of that drug and all profits go to them. Other companies cannot repl...
A patent is a way to protect your invention. A patent makes sure that no other person can make, sell, offer for sale, or import your invention for a certain amount of time, in Canada it is 20 years. Since you have put a lot of time and effort into creating and producing your product, a patent prohibits others from copying your creation so all of your time doesn’t go to waste. This allows you to properly market your creation and prevent competition in the early stages of your commercialization effort. Patentable material includes any “new and useful art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of ...
Over the past five years, RIM has changed its corporate name to BlackBerry, been purchased by private equity firm Fairfax Financial, written down over $1 billion in assets and unsold inventory, and laid off more than 40% of its workforce (Connors). BlackBerry’s fall from market leadership and financial success is the result of a corporate structure that failed to foster individual employee creativity and company-wide innovation. Financial distress, upper-management turnover, and loss of strategic direction are symptoms of BlackBerry’s problem: a failure to innovate and remain competitive in the smartphone market. Recent attempts to regain foothold in the smartphone market include the unsuccessful launches of the PlayBook tablet in 2011 and Z10 and Q10 phones in 2013. These attempts to dismantle the iPhone and Android market power have resulted in BlackBerry trying to mimic its competitors rather than producing cutting-edge products that create value for its customers.
Patents claims focus of the mechanism, principles and components surrounding those ideas. Patents are the strongest of the law to protect the intellectual property. Patent law is based on a very strict liability standard, making a business owner’s strongest option for intellectual property protection. Patents often make use of reverse engineering. Through reverse engineering, they see if patented inventions are in used by another company. Patents have an expiration date; the design patent protect design, shape, configuration and appearance of any invention for 14 years, and utility patents that protect functional makeover and new invention last for 20