The New Yorker: BlackBerry Picking
James Surowiecki wrote a fantastic article for The New Yorker which uses the issues RIM is facing with the NTP patents to illustrate how, in his words, the "... patent system is out of control." I'm not an anti-patent zealot (seems like the majority of the software patents in the news these days are nothing more than common sense 'patented'), but I'm not a big fan of these shell companies (like NTP) that don't actually make anything, but then I guess big companies use them too. But realistically, it's not NTP's fault: they're working the system. The USPTO is broken.
December 20, 2005 in News, Platform by ajohnson
Comments
That's what lawyers do - "work the system." That's what NTP is - a gang of lawyers - making their living off others work- in biological terminology, "parasites." That's not meant to be an insult, I'm only working the language :-)
Posted by: Donald Mann on December 28, 2005 4:14 PM
Yup. This seems to happen in all industries - the ideas behind patent protection are noble but some indeed "work the system" and contaminate the entire well.
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