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There Goes Prepaid Wireless Programs
from the sorry-'bout-that dept
Last month a judge upheld a patent ruling against BCGI for helping mobile operators offer prepaid wireless solutions. Yes, that's right. Having someone pay you before you give them mobile phone service is patented. Now, the judge has increased the fine and issued an injunction that means many carriers offering BCGI's prepaid wireless offerings will have to stop. Yet another example of obvious patents are being used by a company that doesn't offer anything to stop a company that actually did the innovation and brought something to market.
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This
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out of control court room antics
Seriously, the cell phone companies should just call
it post donation usage plans or something "new" like that.
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Re: out of control court room antics
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ummm...surely all forms of rental would be prior a
such as:
gas, electric, water supply services
jukeboxes
appliance rental
pay-as-you-go ADSL or dialup internet access.
Lots of idiots in that patent department.
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Can we please have better informed Judges?
A patent is meant to be "something new and novel
to one skilled in the art".
Unfortunately Judges are not often "skilled in the art".
and so accept as novel what is obviously not!
The only good thing is:
"Ignorance is Curable
Stupidity is Forever!"
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Re: Can we please have better informed Judges?
The patent represents a particular set of processes which were unique and novel at the time. BCGI is using those processes to implement prepaid wireless. No one forced BCGI to use this approach, no one prevented them from researching patents before they built a business on it, and no one forced them to refuse to settle.
So the company that bought the patent has four people and doesn't implement the technology. What does that have to do with anything? We don't force the inventor of an idea to be the implementor. License agreements let one party invent and another implement.
If BCGI and their customers don't want to pay the license fee, they can put their prepaid customers on a postpaid plan and take the credit risk, or they can invent a different way to implement prepaid. It's their own poor planning and arrogance that have brought them to this point.
-dfj
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