Posts Tagged: "rim"

Who is a Patent Troll?

Frankly, the term patent troll has evolved to mean nothing more than this: You are a patent owner who is suing me. Essentially, whether one is a patent troll is in the eye of the beholder. If I’m on the receiving end of a patent lawsuit then you are a patent troll, regardless of whether you are an innovator, regardless of whether you are an operating company, regardless of how you acquired the patents. But why then isn’t Google rightfully considered a patent troll… Lets be clear, acquiring patents, in and of itself, cannot make you a patent troll, period! To the extent Google is properly characterized as an adjudicated patent troll it is because they engaged in abusive behavior. As Mueller explained: “found to have breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing flowing from Motorola’s FRAND licensing pledges to standard-setting organizations.” It is bad action that makes one a patent troll, nothing else…

What is the future of BlackBerry?

When the question “What is the future of BlackBerry?” was entered into the virtual Magic 8 Ball the response was: “Don’t count on it.” Hardly scientific, only mildly amusing, but as far as predictions it is certainly within the envelope of possibilities. Still, the company continues amassing a portfolio of US patents. But this all begs the question about the direction the company will follow with new private ownership. Will they morph into a licensing juggernaut? Might they give up being a manufacturing company altogether and turn their considerable portfolio on the industry? Will the patent portfolio be auctioned off to the highest bidder?

RIM Tries to Patent Flexible Display for Handheld Devices

Research In Motion’s development of better mobile devices is on display in a number of intriguing documents. One application released recently outlines RIM’s development of a mobile device with a flexible display that can be bent up to 180 degrees. Another patent application discusses new tunable capacitors using microwaves for better radio impedance matching. An official patent awarded to the company this week protects an accelerometer component that improves list scrolling within applications.

RIM is also focused on computer systems design providing user feedback. Two applications that give us a closer look at this research and development involve a custom system of building user word lists for predictive text models, as well as location-specific search engines parameters that a user can set manually.

RIM Seeks Patent to Address Cyber-Bullying on Social Networks

Of note, recently the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published multiple patent applications filed by Research In Motion that pertain to smarter, more efficient forms of electronic communication for both cell phones and computers. Another patent application offers some promise for slowing the progress of cyber-bullying on social networks. Yet another patent application takes uses a touchscreen to store fingerprint information to determine ownership for images captured by the device. Still another application of potential interest is one that seeks protection for a system making it easier for mobile content providers to sell digital content, particularly periodicals.

Data Mining Lessons Applied to Analyzing Patent Documents

Recently, we have seen two examples where the use of patent analytics have had a significant impact on the economic valuation of a collection of patents. The first involved a doubling of the value of RIM’s patent portfolio by a major Canadian bank after it was mentioned as having a stand-out portfolio in a patent study. The second involved the analysis of AOL patent assets where two different sets of analytics provided very different results. In the AOL case, when it came to the eventual purchase by Microsoft, one of the valuations matched almost exactly the price that was paid. Both of these cases demonstrate how important well thought out analytics are to providing signals of value when working with patents.