Judge Says The DOJ's BlackBerrys Will Get Cut Off Like Everybody Else's
from the no-preferential-treatement-here dept
The judge ruling on the RIM patent case has denied a bid by the Department of Justice to hold hearings on why government users’ BlackBerry devices should be exempt from any potential shutdown of service, just two days before he hears arguments on whether to grant NTP’s request for an injunction against RIM operating its service in the US. The move comes amid questions being raised over why the government should get special treatment, even though NTP has basically said RIM could go on serving the government. But if the patent can be ignored for the government’s interest, why should it be enforced on everybody else?
Comments on “Judge Says The DOJ's BlackBerrys Will Get Cut Off Like Everybody Else's”
Gov't BS
I’m definitely not surprised the government wants special treatment here. I’m just glad they’re not going to get it.
No Subject Given
I bet NTP said they could keep serving the Government. Dead Blackberry might cause a patent examiner to wake up
Blackberry
The U.S. government relies heavily on the use of Blackberry technology. It aids in getting our decision makers the correct information as soon as possible and allows our key leaders to stay in communication with one another in even the most remote locations. The DOJ and the government in general are much different than your average corporation. Lets not forget that they provide us with protection from our enemies and if giving the government a waiver in order to aid in that mission, then I am all for it. I would hate to think that one soldier, sailor, marine, or airman died because of information that could have gotten to the right people more quickly. Believe me when I say that killing Blackberry would have a huge impact on the Government.
Re: Blackberry
There are lots of other ways to keep soldiers and sailors from dying.
Re: Blackberry
For too long our government has been given preferntial treatment. Allowing the government to skate by and not holding them to the same standards that we hold everyone else to isnt just wrong its stupid. Our government already believes itself above the law, as is evident by the innumerous scandals that plage our great land. At some point someone has to draw a line in the sand and hold the higher powers to the flame like everyone else. I am just glad that they are finally starting too.
Re: Blackberry
Because no other devices exist? Palm?
Special treatment isn't atypical
The reasons all boil down to “because” and have nothing to do with this case:
Personally I think it would be great if NTP got the blackberry network shut down — good for folks like Palm (I’m not a shareholder, just someone who likes competition) and good for raising the issue of how messed up the software patent world is at the moment. Patent law actually seems to work outside the software domain (a few screw-ups not withstanding) so we need a good example to show the non software-aware how software differs.
Re: Just kill Crackberry already !
Yeah, I remember reading about Crater vs. Lucent case.
Lucent is just a bunch of dirtbags..
And some moron invoked government executive priviledge so that Lucent doesn’t have to pay a dime to 3 Crater guys while making some undisclosed amount (likely in 100s of mils) on governmebt contract.
What a world we live in !
Re: Special treatment isn't atypical
“Personally I think it would be great if NTP got the blackberry network shut down” “so we need a good example to show the non software-aware how software differs.”
NTP’s patents have all been rejected, and when it boils down to it, I believe they should be. I think if the network was shutdown, that would be a huge setback for any sort of real progress in software-patents (if we should even have them).
Re: Re: Special treatment isn't atypical
just a little correction above… they haven’t been rejected in the final rounds yet, but they most likely will be.
Re: Special treatment isn't atypical
Your arguments don?t hold water. What NTP is doing isn?t selective enforcement. They?re asking for a partial injunction. Completely different matter. Carter V. Lucent is in no way relevant. It was decided on state secrets which are in no way a factor in this case.
No Subject Given
Ha-HA-Ha-Ha………….
Bha-ha-ha-ah-ah………..
A-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-…………..
Ok, I managed to recover now…
So, what those stupid bastards are saying is that US Government and national security critically depend on some crackberry e-mail service which is routed through some relay server in Canada in order (as originally and wrongly planned) to avoid some patents issued by the US Government.
If this is not outrageously stupid then what is ?
Re: No Subject Given
Yes, the government relies on Blackberries. They may not be ‘mission critical’ in the traditional sense, but most of the top decision makers have Blackberries (and often Nextel phones w/PtT) as a way to quickly communicate and recieve non-classified information. A lot of people in the White House use them, but also at pretty much all agencies.
It may not be an ideal way of working, but it’s no different than the reliance on Blackberries of thousands of high level executives. Would a shutdown make it impossible for them to do their jobs, probably not, although it would make it a lot more difficult. It would cost a lot of time and money to implement a new solution, even if it is currently available.
BTW, you should be happy about this. 30 years ago, the government would have re-created the Blackberry system at great expense, now they just use off the shelf stuff where ever they can. They use the public internet for email (god forbid!), WiFi (for emergency communication even!) and technologies developed overseas like SAP and Linux (oh no!). All of which is good as they are the single largest consumer of technology and it would be a huge waste of money (and bad for the industry) if they tried to re-invent the wheel every time they needed to deploy a new functionality.
Re: Re: Oh yeah, I am happy
As a small inventor with one patent I am really happy about our government…
So if some scumbag illegally implements my invention into his technology and gives it to US goventment for cheap (like those RIM scumbags did when they gace free Crackberries to Congress people), then I should be stripped of my patent, right ?
National security
What’s actually most likely is that the government will invoke provisions in the law that make it impossible for the judge to shutdown Blackberry.
There are a number of ways the government can simply shutdown the case, no matter what the judge says. It’s not always possible to for them to do this, but around patents in particular, there are ways to deal with this sort of situation. One way is to simply make this a national security patent ( see http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/invention/admin.html ) and make it classified. I don’t think they’ve gone down this route yet as they are trying to work within the system, but if push came to shove…
Chris.