On Friday, February 24, the long-running patent dispute between Research In Motion (RIM), which makes the popular BlackBerry wireless email and communications device, and NTP, a holding company, will finally have its day in court. That's when a federal judge in the Eastern District Court of Virginia will consider a possible injunction that could shut down BlackBerry service in the U.S. But more importantly, the ruling could shine light on a flawed patent system.
While there are many moving parts in this five-year patent battle, the basic conflict is over NTP's contention that RIM's use of a wireless messaging network to deliver email infringes on patents that NTP owns. But the dispute raises other, more far-reaching questions, such as: Should Research In Motion have to pay a percentage of its sales to NTP, which may not have commercialized its patent anyway? Why has the battle gone on this long? Could RIM be shut down over a patent dispute even while the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is re-evaluating several of the disputed patents? (Indeed, according to several news reports, the USPTO has already indicated that it eventually intends to reject all of NTP's claims.) And finally, can the U.S. patent system, which in 1977 permitted a patent for a "comb over" -- technically a "method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head" -- keep up with technological innovation and a flood of patent requests? Does the patent system itself need a do-over?
"That's the central question," says Wharton professor Eric Clemons. "The balance is between encouraging innovators and benefiting society. This debate has been around for hundreds of years, and it ebbs and flows. Ben Franklin opposed patents in any form, and obviously he was wrong. Innovation is encouraged if innovators are rewarded. But when patents are too easy to get, mini-innovations can either shut down real services or command enormous payments for, in essence, doing nothing.
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