After reading it, I've got to side with NTP. They may be patent trolls, but the law is the law. RIM should have done better research before going forward with their technology and they also should have just settled with NTP early on rather than dragging it out just because they say they didn't do anything wrong. Patent law is about who came up with the idea first--sometimes the copycat didn't steal it, he was just late--but that's the way it goes. RIM was so against giving NTP a couple million to go away that they resorted to using American politicians and 911 as an excuse to keep NTP from winning their case.
Sound extreme? Here's a quote from the article:
RIM and its defenders in Congress played their trump card — invoking the spectre of another major terrorist attack in Washington. Several lawmakers, impressed that their own BlackBerrys had not failed on Sept. 11, 2001, while cellphones everywhere went dead, warned in hearings that shutting off the devices threatened national security.
See, this is another great example of humans failing to see the forest for the trees. RIM argued that the courts couldn't shut down the BlackBerry service because so much relied on it. What that argument misses is that RIM could avoid the shutdown by just paying up. The admittedly old, dusty patents NTP owns have been, essentially, validated in previous court cases. If RIM would just settle, everyone could move on with their lives. Because they fought--they could be eventually forced to pay NTP hundreds of millions.
Principles are great, but use them to change the law and save your company's life in the meantime. Life isn't fair, but the guy who founded NTP has died of cancer as a financially poor guy (especially compared to RIM), while RIM is immensely successful. The argument of life being unfair could be used against both parties.
For me, though--I always side with the poor folks.
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