The dark side of patents
In his Blackberry blog Aaron Johnson points us to an article on the New Yorker about the NTP/RIM lawsuit, with interesting points regarding the US patent system.
“…The BlackBerry will become the quintessential symbol of something else: a patent system that is out of control.”
I didn’t know much about NTP, but I find this paragraph illuminating:
Unfortunately, the real innovations in this case are not technological but legal. N.T.P. is a company without employees or products. It never tried to build a real business around its patents, and it never licensed them to others, until R.I.M. demonstrated just how lucrative wireless e-mail could be. No one alleges that R.I.M. used N.T.P.�s patents to build the BlackBerry; it invented its system from scratch. N.T.P., holding the patent on an idea and a crude design, waited until another company created a successful business based on similar ideas, and then headed to court.
Sounds familiar?