Win some, lose some: Motorola 1, patent troll 1

Motorola Mobility got some bad news and good news on Wednesday when a US jury found it ripped off an Intellectual Ventures-owned technology patent although denied a second infringement claim. The panel of peers, sitting in a federal court in Delaware, ruled that a range of Moto smartphones in 2011 infringed US patent 7,810,144 …

[Someone Else]

The jury ruled [PDF] that Motorola had shown the Intellectual Ventures claim [the '450 patent that describes the use of TCP/IP to move packets of data between wireless base station points] to be invalid as the patent itself was too obvious an idea to any seasoned engineer.

Seems to me that the '144 patent should be even more obvious to an unseasoned engineer. I mean, doesn't that rather describe using something like FTP as a transport for a store-and-forward node? Shit, we were doing stuff like that back in the '80s. (Course, back then, the intestinal parasite bearing the name of Intellectual Vultures...er...Ventures wasn't even a glimmer in Nathan Myhrvold's eye.)

[Mark 85]

Well, since we were naïve back then and did things like "shareware" and "freeware" and didn't patent stuff, then I suppose that legally, there's no prior art. Even if this was patented, these lawsuits are a a crock any way one looks at it. Unless of course, you're a patent troll who wants basically money for nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Prior art is not limited to patents

It doesn't matter whether something was patented or not, it qualifies as prior art either way. Might be harder to dig up in your defense if it only exists in some shareware that was long forgotten.

There are plenty of problems with the US patent system, but the test for prior art is not one of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

US

Good 'ol uncle Sam. He really knows how to encourage innovation.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF ?

"The '144 patent describes a process in which files are uploaded, authenticated by a third party to check the identity of the sender, and then passed on to other devices"

How the hell is this not different to how fundamentally the Internet works ?

What next, copyright claims on the Bible.

America, sort your shit out.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: WTF ?

How the hell is this not different to how fundamentally the Internet works ?

The Internet does not "fundamentally" involve "authentica[tion] by a third party". For that matter, it doesn't "fundamentally" involve uploading files.

Of course, I see you asked "how ... is this not different". Indeed it is different, so I suppose the answer is "in no way".