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back to article BlackBerry inventor escapes UK patent fees

Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind BlackBerry mobile devices, will not have to pay patent licence fees to a rival email software company after the High Court ruled that the rival's UK patent was invalid. RIM took the court case to revoke a patent owned by Visto, which makes email software. It also asked the courts to …

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  1. analyzer
    Linux

    Oi US Courts

    Read it and weep

    "That is exactly the sort of thing that computers do when programmed. It does not seem to me that that is enough of a technical effect to render the invention patentable," he said.

    Hopefully the Federal courts and SCOTUS will heads up and sort the USPTO out finally

    UK is Linux friendly :)

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  2. David S

    Eh?

    Common-sense being applied to software patents? What the...

    Oh, *UK* patent law. I see...

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Oi US Courts

    Unfortunately for your hopes that SCOTUS will pay attention, America diverged from UK Common Law in 1776.

    "American courts rarely follow post-Revolution Commonwealth rulings unless there is no American ruling on the point, the facts and law at issue are nearly identical, and the reasoning is strongly persuasive."

    It's got nothing to do with being 'Linux-friendly' (I speak as a kernel hacker too, before the flames start!). It's got everything to do with the essence patents:

    Inventive Step

    Technical Effect

    Not obvious to one skilled in the art

    The decision is merely reinforcing these fundamentals. It's saying that just because you can do something with a computer (as a result of programming it), it doesn't mean that it is an inventive step.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "UK is Linux friendly"

    I see that Linux development in the UK puts food on table and pays the increasingly-astronomical mortgage and energy bills. You're saved, yay-you.

    I've read it, and I'm weeping: Macrossan, Astron Clinica. Autonomy and now this decision have achieved nothing more than drive an economical wedge between the UK and the rest of Europe (well, the other EPC members, which amounts to a sh1tload more than the EU itself) insofar as software investment and the development of a knowledge economy is concerned. And not in a good way, might I add.

    Flame hazard icon, for obvious reasons.

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  5. McToo
    Linux

    Linux certainly does....

    put food on the table and pay the bills... in this part of the UK, at least.

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  6. J Davies
    Happy

    "UK is Linux friendly"

    GNU/Linux & other FOSS development certainly puts food on my table, pays the mortgage and stops me putting the shareholders food on Microsoft's table.

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  7. Steve Roper
    Alien

    Re: AC with flame

    Hmmm. Must be a patent troll as well as a forum one!

    Alien because that creature looks more like a troll than anything else on here...

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