If you haven't looked at the patents at issue, I'd urge you to spend a few minutes doing so. (I've read countless articles on the issue, and it's odd that I had to go on a specific search to finally find one that actually mentioned the patents at issue. I've linked them below for your convenience. As you'll see, these are quite technical patents that go into far more detail than many a valid patent that has stood for years. They are not "airplane ideas.") This is not something Campana threw together and filed away so he could someday sue someone. The man developed a technology, plain and simple. He didn't have the money to take it to market, so he and a patent attorney formed a holding company to license and protect his intellectual property. RIM came along, used that technology, and then blew him off.
RIM would have to have taken NTP's push system exactly, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that they did.
Uh, there is enormous evidence that they did exactly, precisely that. There's the issue of a jury trial whose verdict stood all the way to the steps of the Supreme Court, saying that it's exactly what RIM did. There's a boatload of evidence that drove that verdict and enabled it to stand strongly enough that SCOTUS refused to even re-examine the case.
The patent office doesn't seem, so far, to agree with NTP. This to me is the key piece.
Huh? What about the fact that the PTO issued every single one of the patents? And it's not like just one of them happened to slip through. Every one of them went through the arduous process of prosecution before the PTO. (I've done it. Personally. "Arduous" is an understatement on even a "low" tech; I can only imagine what it was like to get these through the system.) Why is it that so many people, yourself included, seem so willing to totally ignore the fact that these patents were issued years ago, and have been in full force since then, despite a full frontal assault in court challenging their validity? The PTO backpedals and you automatically assume that now they're right, yet then they were so obviously wrong? Remember, during the trial, RIM brought every argument imaginable forward in an attempt to convince the jury that the patents should've never been issued. They failed.
I'm not saying that you harbor this particular misunderstanding, but there are many people who think the patents involved are just now working their way through the PTO and are being rejected. That's not remotely accurate. They've already been through. They were all issued. They were all challenged with great rigor. They all withstood. They are valid patents in every sense and will remain so unless and until NTP exhausts all of its appeals over any retro-decision on the part of the PTO. These appeals will be first within the PTO and then through the courts, and they could easily last all the way to 2012, at which time the patents will reach the ripe old age of expiration.
I'm as anti-frivolous-lawsuit as anyone on the planet, but that's just not what happened here. A very smart and forward thinking man invented a technology that proved to be of immense use to the public. RIM snatched it up and implemented it as its own, then just ignored NTP when they showed up and said, "Excuse me, but you can't do that." And instead of settling years ago for a comparative pittance by paying the guy a fair royalty, they continued to ignore him. Having read up on the issue, the RIM CEO comes across to me as a testosterone-charged, highly charismatic man who thinks he can never lose, that he does what he wants and always wins and to hell with anybody who gets in his way. He was wrong.
MM
I had found the patent documentation, and started looking through it, but frankly it wasn't a fun read. :-)
I'll take another look at it though. You're making a pretty good argument. I'll give it a shot.