Computer Ethics, Fall 2011

Corboy 423;  7:00-9:30 Th, Nov 17, Class 12

Readings:


i4i xml patent, #5787449

Filed 1994, granted July 1998. The Canadian company i4i won a $200-million judgement against Microsoft. Here is what the patent claims:

A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation.

Despite the italicized phrase, the patent application suggests that at the time of invention the i4i claim was all about a perceived improvement on the existing practice of mixing tags and content inline:

For manual production of documents the intermingling of the markup codes with the content is still the best way of communicating structure. For electronic storage and manipulation it suffers from a number of shortcomings.

Yet further, there is a difficulty of resolving the markup codes from the structure. Markup codes have to be differentiated from the content stream they are a part of. This involves designating `special` characters or sequences of characters which should be identified and acted upon. This complicates the task of any routine which must work on the document.

This is incredibly basic. It is fundamentally not an issue. The only claimed improvement for the i4i approach is processing speed:

The present invention provides also for efficiency of operation on the document. The invention allows document operations to be much more efficient. It is no longer necessary to parse the entire document to locate the embedded codes. Differentiating codes from content is obviously no longer a problem since they are held in different areas. This also allows more efficient coding strategies to be developed without the restriction of ensuring that all codes are clearly differentiated from any possible content.

A further patent claim highlighting the concept of separation.

Thus, in sharp contrast to the prior art the present invention is based on the practice of separating encoding conventions from the content of a document. The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map, whereas document content is held in a mapped content area.

It appears that i4i inflated their patent claims in court. They may have claimed their method covered any editing of xml in such a way as to offer editing of either the content or the structure separately. Alternatively, Office 12 did include a feature (the XML Data Store) in which some xml could be included in the files that would affect the format of the remaining document; this might have been the "data structure" that represented "distinct storage" of the "metacode map". Still, i4i's patent is actually about how to maintain the "metacodes" (XML markup tags) separately from the document content, for efficiency reasons; using one xml file to affect how another xml file determines a document layout is an entirely different thing.

It is admittedly a logical chain from the idea of separating data and tags to the idea of separate editing of data and tags. But that chain does not appear to be in the patent. Furthermore, at one point, in discussing using metacode maps for multiple document views, i4i acknowledges prior art:

In SGML this ability to overlay two or more structures on a single set of text is called Concur. Its usefulness has long been recognized but it has proven difficult to implement

There is a detailed example in the i4i patent application as to how to convert the following:

<Chapter><Title>The Secret Life of Data</Title><Para>Data is hostile. </Para>The End</Chapter>

Figures from the patent application are here.

I4I did indeed "invent" something. But what they invented was essentially the idea that some customers wanted to edit text documents that had an underlying XML structure. Once you realize that customers might pay for that, the creation of the actual product is obvious. This is very similar to the NTP v RIM case.

The part about "separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document" sounds deep, or at least nontrivial, except that the patent application itself strongly suggests that the invention is really just about a specific implementation technique for separating archictecture from content.  Virtually all flavors of xml use embedded tags, <foo>like this</foo>. The whole point of the i4i patent is that it doesn't use embedded tags.

On the other hand, there are suggestions that Microsoft did in fact develop a format for creating "custom XML schemas" that used the i4i method. Any xml schema that lets you set the tag values in one place and one place only, as opposed to doing a global search-and-replace, could be said to violate the spirit of the i4i patent.

Still, it is a stretch, to say the least, to believe that the i4i patent covers all custom XML schemas.

The following is from the blog of an Office product manager at Microsoft, Brian Jones, http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11/04/integrating-with-business-data-store-custom-xml-in-the-office-xml-formats.aspx.

XML Data Store

In Office 12, we've introduced a new feature to the formats that we're currently calling the XML data store, and the way it works is really simple. As you should all know by now, the new format consists of a ZIP file with a bunch of XML parts (files) inside. Up until now we've talked about all the parts that we in Office have defined to create our documents. You as a developer also have the ability to add your own parts though. You can take any XML file and put it inside the ZIP package. Then all you need to do is create a relationship from the main document part to your XML part, and the Office applications will roundtrip your XML with the file, which means:

Roundtripping your data: The ability to put your XML in the ZIP package means that you now have a place to store any data your solution may need. The data will travel with the document, but will always be stored as a separate XML part in the ZIP package. This means it's really easy to get to and modify without dealing with any of the application's data....

Separating data from the document: As well, because the information is stored in the data store, you benefit from the fact that the user cannot directly edit your data by editing the document (they can’t accidentally delete part of your data, since it’s stored separately.

This is kind of vague; a more concrete example can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb510135.aspx. (Another article on this feature is at http://openxmldeveloper.org/blog/b/openxmldeveloper/archive/2010/10/27/59361.aspx.) Note that it indeed allows a separate XML area that is connected to the main document only via tags. However, the original i4i patent appeared to involve using the separate area for tag values; the Microsoft strategy on the face of it is for a separate area for entire XML files. The last paragraph is all about the real-world importance of separating the tags and storing them elsewhere.

See also Joe Wilcox's article at www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Is-Microsoft-violator-or-victim-in-i4i-patent-dispute/1250119565, in which he suggests that the Microsoft customers most interested in this new Office feature were those in the pharmaceuticals industry, which is exactly what i4i writes software for.

At the page www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/08/13/update_microsoft_knew_about_i4i_s_xml_patent, there is an alleged quote from Microsoft "newly leaked emails":

"We saw [i4i's products] some time ago and met its creators. Word 11 will make it obsolete," said one email from Martin Sawicki, a member of Microsoft's XML for Word development team.

That would make the '449 a defensive patent: one where the purpose is not to be a patent troll, but instead to allow you to launch defensive attacks against competitors that horn in on your market. This does not legitimize the patent completely, but does put it in a different context.

An excellent technical blog on the '449 patent is at http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/08/mircrosoft-and-the-two-xml-pat.html. There's a good example of what metacodes are all about, but also a somewhat cryptic discussion of point tags (like <b> in html) versus range tags (like <title> ... </title>, strictly hierarchical).


MS information on how the editing works: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa212889%28office.11%29.aspx.

It appears to be true that Microsoft intended to take i4i's broader idea -- supporting the structural editing of XML-based documents -- and thus to take over i4i's business niche.

Somehow, i4i convinced a jury in East Texas that their patent covers any editing of XML, so as to preserve the structure. This is what Office 12 did.


After the jury verdict, Microsoft petitioned the District Court for a "Judgement as a Matter of Law" (JMoL), meaning that they wanted the judge to declare that the jury verdict contradicted the existing law in the case; that is, to find "there is no legally sufficient
evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find as the jury did." A high standard has to be met here, but this is indeed the appropriate avenue if the jury misunderstood the patent. However, the judge also misunderstands the patent; he wrote (in http://cs.luc.edu/pld/ethics/i4i_v_microsoft_district_jmol.pdf)

The ‘449 patented invention created a reliable method of processing and storing content and metacodes separately and distinctly. The data structure primarily responsible for this separation is called a “metacode map.” According to the patent, the “metacode map” allows a computer to manipulate the structure of a document without reference to the content. [p 2]

The metacode map is a data structure that once upon a time might have saved some computing resources, but which is trivial to work around by leaving the tags "in place" in the document. The metacode map has nothing to do with the idea of manipulating the XML structure without referring to the content, except in that it might suggest one possible way to do that.

However, here's the district court opinion on data structures:

First, Microsoft argues that i4i presented no evidence that the accused WORD products created “a data structure” as required by the Court’s construction of the claim term “metacode map.” The Court construed and instructed the jury that “metacode map” and “map of metacodes” in the ‘449 patent meant “a data structure that contains a plurality of metacodes and their addresses of use corresponding to mapped content.” The Court further construed “mapped content” as meaning “the content of a document corresponding to a metacode map.”

Essentially, i4i managed to claim that any way of storing "metacodes", including embedding them in the body of the document, amounts to storing them in a "data structure" as covered by the patent. Even though the stated point of the patent was that this data structure be "separate".

During trial Dr. Rhyne, one of i4i’s technical experts, explained that the meaning of “a data structure” was “a physical or logical relationship among data elements designed to support specific data manipulation functions.”

In other words, embedded XML tags would now be a "data structure" too.

All this suggests that i4i has figured out how to expand their original claims. The expanded claim is clearly still tied to the invention, and so the court elected to uphold it, but the expansion so waters down the original idea as to turn it into something genuinely obvious.

Maybe Microsoft's core problem is that they were not able to find a short and comprehensible way to say the following:

    embedded codes are prior art.


Microsoft appealed the case to the Federal Circuit, and then to the Supreme Court. But you cannot appeal a finding of fact as to claims interpretation. The issue MS brought to the Supreme Court was the fairness of the presumption that patents were valid, which thus required "clear and convincing evidence" to overturn a patent. The Supreme Court upheld this standard, though they did agree that in the case of prior art that had not been previously considered by the patent office then a weaker "preponderance of evidence" standard could apply. But that didn't help Microsoft.

Discussion:

State Street Bank case, and Business-Method patents

Patent 5193056

decided 1998; patent filed 1993
Basic outcome: financial-services software containing an algorithm is patentable. From the 1998 Federal Circuit decision:

(...) the transformation of data, representing discrete dollar amounts, by a machine through a series of mathematical calculations into a final share price, constitutes a practical application of a mathematical algorithm, formula, or calculation, because it produces 'a useful, concrete and tangible result' -- a final share price momentarily fixed for recording and reporting purposes and even accepted and relied upon by regulatory authorities and in subsequent trades.

Until then, while software might be patentable, business methods that contained software or algorithms could not be patented (to be more precise, this "business-methods exception" to patentability was an oft-stated maxim, but the courts had never ruled directly on it). State Street allowed the patenting of business software. State Street Bank had been granted a patent, and the case came as SSB apparently sued another bank which then tried to use the business-methods exception as a defense.

The State Street Bank case introduced the rule that a business method could be patented if it involved computers and "it produces a useful, concrete, and tangible result".

Once the USPTO began patenting software as part of a business process, it became too difficult to distinguish between sofware-as-algorithmic-invention and software-as-business-method. So the USPTO also reversed its longstanding refusal to grant patents purely for software (until then, software patents had to list some hardware involvement, although that was mostly a formality in practice).

This case opened the door to a huge influx of business-method patents, including Amazon's "one-click" method (below). For a while, the USPTO required business-method patents to involve computers (specifically, to have some connection to "the technological arts"), but even that was eventually thrown out in 2005 as too hard to enforce. However, there remains a great deal of overlap between business-method patents and software patents.

Exhibit A: Amazon "one-click" patent, # 5960411, granted 1999. Twenty-three days later, Amazon got an injunction against Barnes & Noble, and eventually won their case. BN had to stop using their "ExpressLane" shopping method.

The essential feature of the 1-click patent appears to be that you don't have to go through the usual multi-screen checkout process; you can just click "send me this stuff the usual way", and it will remember all your previous entries.

Paul Barton-Davis, one of Amazon's founding programmers, called the 1-Click patent "a cynical and ungrateful use of an extremely obvious technology" [emphasis added]. By "ungrateful", Barton-Davis apparently meant that Amazon had benefitted enormously from public-domain software ideas.

Other examples:
Several more-mundane patents on online shopping carts

IBM[?]'s patent on suggesting new purchases based on past ones

See the Bilski case (later) for more updates.


Patent ruling in Apple "Cover Flow" feature.
album cover-flow image

Graph of phone-patent lawsuits

Apple seems intent on suing Google for Android, apparently believing Android to be a knockoff of the iPhone. However, history makes this much less clear. Smartphones were introduced in 2001 and 2002 by Palm, Microsoft and Blackberry. The iPhone did not appear until 2007. The iPhone did introduce the multi-touch interface. Android was introduced in 2008.

Similar lawsuits have been filed by Apple against makers of products competing with the iPad; the Samsung Galaxy tablet has been banned in Australia. But most of what Apple has are design patents, not software patents. Ironically, Apple already licenses several Samsung patents for phones generally. And many observers have commented that HTC seems to be introducing innovative features faster than Apple right now.

Apple based the Macintosh interface on work at Xerox PARC, and then failed to protect it from Microsoft (actually, the judge ruled that Apple had licensed the technology to MS). At least some of what Apple wants to protect in their iPhone cases is the design, though much of the design basics came from the work of Dieter Rams.

More on Apple patents


Here's patent 6122520 / RE 42927: System and method for obtaining and using location specific information
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57325995/apple-gets-killer-location-services-patent/\

RE42927


http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/31/2522418/apple-brings-proven-defense-strategy-to-its-u-s-case-against-samsung

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387401,00.asp

Here's an amazing graph by Florian Mueller on Apple patent litigation relating to the iPhone:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44759893/Apple-vs-Android-10-12-02

Here are some of the patents mentioned:

Apple v HTC before the International Trade Commission (ITC), filed March 2, 2010


5481721    Method for providing automatic and dynamic translation of object oriented programming language-based message passing into operation system message passing using proxy objects


5566337    Method and apparatus for distributing events in an operating system

5946647    System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data

5969705    Message protocol for controlling a user interface from an inactive application program

6275983    Object-oriented operating system

6343263    Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data

======================

Apple v HTC, US District Court, Delaware


5455599    Object-oriented graphic system

5848105    GMSK signal processors for improved communications capacity and quality

5920726    System and method for managing power conditions within a digital camera device

6424354    Object-oriented event notification system with listener registration of both interests and methods

7362331    Time-based, non-constant translation of user interface objects between states

7479949    Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics

7633076    Automated response to and sensing of user activity in portable devices


HTC counterclaims


5377354    Method and system for sorting and prioritizing electronic mail messages

6188578    Integrated circuit package with multiple heat dissipation paths

7278032    Circuit and operating method for integrated interface of PDA and wireless communication system

Apple has developed many very clever ideas for the iPhone. Many of these patents seem rather broad, however, especially the location patent.

Note that the strategy of Samsung/HTC appears to be to file infringement counterclaims. This is why it's much harder for a legitimate developer to sue for infringement than a troll. However, the Samsung and HTC patents appear mostly to be general patents on wireless technology that they had previously agreed to license on Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms.




Google and Microsoft sue GeoTag
GeoTag appears to be a classic troll. But the article mentions Skyhook, and suggests it is not a troll. Does this matter? What about i4i?

Here's the GeoTag patent: 5,930,474

How this compares with RE42927 I have no idea.

This patent is definitely an example of an idea, the implementation of which is obvious, given the availability of GPS. Should such things be patentable?

Stallman article: why software is different


1. There's no advance warning (but isn't this true of any patent?)

2. There is no easy way to read them. They are deliberately obscure. And, for software, this is directly tied to the fact that the algorithms are very general.

3. Some patents are just plain inappropriate, but fighting them is exhorbitant.

4. chicken-and-egg problem with converting from .gif to .png: how can you get browsers to support this? (This is partially resolved by browser plug-ins.)

5. "prior art" is very hit-or-miss; sometimes (often!) it was considered too obvious to document. More specifically, ideas ruled by the PTO to be patentable were often "CS folklore" but too obvious to publish.

6. Software tends to use many ideas per application, and so one software project might require licensing of many diffferent pieces. This makes incremental innovation difficult, for anyone. (Even microsoft.) This problem exists for software because writing software is in some sense much easier than traditional engineering, and so you can afford to put more ideas in.

7. Software licensing terms tend not to take into account the fact that projects use many ideas, and a given patented piece should be only a small part of the total.

8. Open source.

9. Patented standards are a large social cost.

10. It is not possible to search the patent database before the patent is granted

11. Tremendous software progress is often made with negligible investment; we don't need patents to encourage development.

12. Computing has a high rate of radical, as opposed to incremental, change.

An issue that Stallman doesn't address directly is that 20 years is a very long time in the software industry, and that locking an idea up for that long has the practical effect of stifling growth, not encouraging it. Software patents have had the effect of postponing adoption until patent expires (cf James Gosling's first language) (hint: his second language was Java).

A related issue is that weak patents can have HUGE social costs, by blocking core technologies that everyone needs.

And basic ideas are still being patented for a new use (eg the Steir hair patent)

Finally, another issue is the obvious-in-context problem I mentioned above, that does seem to be a special issue with software: often an idea is an immediate, trivial corollary of some later development, or of some more abstract way of looking at the situation. However, some earlier out-of-context patent may still apply. The XOR-cursor and Eolas patents may be of this type. It's not that embedded applets is an innovative idea, per se, it just takes a critical mass of web sites to become relevant.

Is software legitimately a special case?



Paul Graham

This would be a good time to take a quick look at the Paul Graham paper. Graham is both a venture capitalist and a software engineer (and a Lisp programmer!). One of his first points is the following:

One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against software patents, you're against patents in general. Gradually our machines consist more and more of software. Things that used to be done with levers and cams and gears are now done with loops and trees and closures. There's nothing special about physical embodiments of control systems that should make them patentable, and the software equivalent not.

Here are a few more, based largely on his experience as a venture capitalist. Patents, he feels, don't matter much to software startups, unlike physical-machine startups.
Graham has three reasons why patents don't matter:
  1. Software is complicated; the real issue isn't the software but developing -- and designing -- it. However, this argument also works the other way; if you have an idea, then you are better off pursuing patent enforcement than development, because development is hard. But also note Graham's point that if a big company tries to copy a little company's patents, there will be a "thousand little things the big company will get wrong".
  2. Startups seldom compete head-to-head with big companies; they "change the paradigm". You don't go into the word-processing business; you invent Writely (now part of Google Apps?). And, "big companies are extremely good at denial". They will go to great lengths to pretend that you don't exist, to "keep you in their blind spot". Suing a startup would mean you realized they were dangerous. He cites IBM as an example; it would have been demeaning for them to sue microcomputer developers. Also, for Microsoft to sue web-app developers (or smartphone developers) would be to admit that Windows is fading.
  3. Hacker opinion is against big patent lawsuits. If you're a big high-tech company, you'll lose a lot of your best people if you're seen "doing evil". This might be true for Google; it's less clear at Microsoft (though the employees there do care about principles). It's probably not true at Eolas.
What do you think of these? How does the Eolas case fit in?

The argument is sometimes made that patents have real value for startups, so that they can cross-license if accused of violating other patents. Is this a legitimate argument in favor of patents?

And here's a student project from Stanford, dated 2000:
http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-99-00/software-patents
The authors are Carr, Gray, Watkins and Yang, and the patents they consider in depth are

MP3 patents and lawsuits

The MP3 idea was not obvious, and remains fairly complex. Alcatel-Lucent v Microsoft: Alcatel-Lucent won $1.5 billion in an infringement suit about mp3 decoders Feb 22, 2007

MS countersued for other patents

The judge eventually set aside the damages, and the appellate court agreed.

Aug 6, 2007: MS won new trial

MS is now suing A-L for other patents.

check out mp3licensing.com (Thompson) Royalty Rates: basic mp3 decoder: $0.75/unit

mp3 was published in 1991. Will all US mp3 patents expire in 2011? Original holder: Thompson Consumer Electronics & Fraunhofer Institute. These still hold the "core" mp3 patents.

MP3 Patent claimants:

To date, (some) patent holders have announced that no action will be taken against open-source decoders.

The mp3 compression algorithm is admittedly a deep idea. Part of it involves the use of wave decomposition to store the information more efficiently; part of it involves "psychoacoustics" to identify parts of a sound file that are "unhearable" and so can be deleted.

Note that patents are for the use of an idea in a specific context:

Patent problems:

submarine patents: you don't hear about them until too late!

prior art: hard to find, hard to document, trivial ideas were never written down!
This problem, at least, will go away with the passage of time.

non-obviousness: difficult to contest many ideas go into one program! Technology evolves extremely rapidly Violates settled expectations (important part of law!) What's patented seems to be more a matter of chance than anything else.

ignorance is no defense: "submarine" patents entire process is secret: you can be making good-faith effort to be noninfringing and get hit with a huge verdict.

wilful: you had advance notice of infringing. Your belief that the patent was invalid may NOT be a defense, although it has been accepted as a defense in some cases. Damages automatically triple.

Europe

EU Parliament voted in July 2005  648-14 AGAINST the EPO (European Patent Office) directive.

March 17, 2009: European Patent Office has asked the EU's "Enlarged Board of Appeal" to decide on the exclusion of software from patentability. The EPO has long been pushing for software patentability, and this is seen by some as an attempt to bypass the European Parliament.
See http://lwn.net/Articles/324022
Also http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/EPO_seeks_to_validate_software_patents_without_the_European_Parliament.
Also http://www.ffii.org/EPOReferral. Note especially Q3, under Questions. Under some earlier rulings (T163/85 and T190/94), patentability required "a technical effect on a physical entity in the real world". However, other rules did not include this requirement.

European patent law is similar to the Diamond v Diehr standard: machines that use software are patentable, but not software that stands alone. However, in the US the Diehr standard evolved into software patentability; in Europe software remains unpatentable as such.

Here's an article from FFII.org entitled, "Why are Software Patents so Trivial?", in which they suggest that this is a fundamental problem: http://eupat.ffii.org/analysis/frili.

Who are the stakeholders in software patents? Are we stakeholders? Compare pharmaceuticals. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050818_000863.html: "Do you feel helped by patent reform?"

If the Eolas patent had succeeded earlier in the game, Firefox might never have been started, and then Internet Explorer would still likely lack tabs, plug-ins, and other core features.

WHY does the situation seem so different from pharmaceuticals?


Role of "patent trolls", or patent licensing firms
("troll" as in "the troll under the bridge, demanding tolls", not "trolling" as in fishing for "flames")

Note that the established-company-versus-established-company defense of a "patent bank" is useless here.

Patents and standards-setting

Company A participates in creation of a standard; they suggest solution S for a particular issue. After the standard is widely adopted, company A announces that they have patented S, and that they will license it for a significant fee.

N-Data patent on ethernet speed autonegotiation:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080123-ftc-defends-ethernet-forces-patent-troll-back-under-bridge.html

Barriers to entry

Patent Trolls: companies that have no assets but patent claims, and don't attempt to produce anything but simply collect. Is this bad? Or are such companies just creating a market for small inventors to sell their inventions?

I4i is not such a company; they did produce an XML-based product.

Patent and open source

The open-source community is a strong proponent of eliminating software patents.

Is the open-source community entitled to:

Is the open-source community entitled to the asterisk phone switch?

Does MS intend to destroy or hobble or marginalize linux through patents?

It is very well documented that the patent process can have a very NEGATIVE impact on open-source development, and on generally accepted software adoption.

So if the purpose of software patents is to aid technological process, and it doesn't do that, are software patents a good idea?

What happens if the software in question is made available through a site in Europe, which (as of now) doesn't have strong software-patent laws? Should the site warn visitors from the US?

Is this at all like thepiratebay.org?


Patents: are the right ideas being patented? Or are patents being granted to trolls for peripheral ideas?
xor:   trolls?
rsa:   good
spreadsheets:   trolls?
eolas:   trolls?


NTP v RIM (Research In Motion): maker of Blackberry

See http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3087

Thomas Campana filed his first patent in 1991, for an email system with wireless links. The system has been called a merger of email and wireless pagers, which existed at that time. It remains very unclear just what claim is patented.

Note that in 1991 email was still in its infancy.

Was this really a "business method" patent?? The software case is quite weak, unless the claim is for the business idea of email to wireless devices. There has been some discussion in the media about how the patent covers the way forwarding is handled, and where messages are stored, but I see NO evidence of that in the actual patent application. (This may actually have been disinformation from RIM, as they proposed a different forwarding system as a "workaround", part of a negotiating tactic.)

See http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3087.

Campana founded his company NTP to enforce his patents. A lawsuit was brought in 2000, after RIM (and others) wouldn't agree to a license.

Campana died in October 2004.

RIM settled for $612 million in Mar 2006 , after an original verdict of $33 million (part of the final settlement is that there are no ongoing royalty payments, so this isn't as egregious as it might seem. Still, the settlement amount just seemed to balloon.)

The patent had been challenged with the USPTO. The PTO retracted one or two of the patents in Feb 2006, but the presiding judge in the case (Judge Spencer) refused to stay the case pending further USPTO findings. [Proceedings are still pending within the USPTO regarding other Campana patents.] I am trying to find out the USPTO final decision here. Here is a RIM update on the patent-office reexamination; I do not think it is final and it is also a press release.

Just a day after a judge in the NTP-RIM patent fight said that he would not wait for the US Patent Office to complete a review of NTP's patents, that same Patent Office announced a "non-final" ruling on one of the NTP patents, suggesting that the original patent might not be valid. -- techdirt.com

How could the court and the USPTO be so far apart on this?