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BlackBerry has filed a patent lawsuit (PDF) against Internet telephony firm Avaya. The dispute marks a turning point for Blackberry, which pushed into the Android market last year but has been struggling.
In making its case that Avaya should pay royalties, BlackBerry's focus is squarely on its rear-view mirror. The firm argues that it should be paid for its history of innovation going back nearly 20 years.
"BlackBerry revolutionized the mobile industry," the company's lawyers wrote in their complaint. "BlackBerry... has invented a broad array of new technologies that cover everything from enhanced security and cryptographic techniques, to mobile device user interfaces, to communication servers, and many other areas."
Out of a vast portfolio, BlackBerry claims Avaya infringes eight US Patents:
The patents have various original filing dates, ranging from 2011 back to 1998.
Accused products include Avaya's video conferencing systems, Avaya Communicator for iPad, a product that connects mobile users to IP Office systems, and various IP desk phones. The '961 cryptography patent is allegedly infringed by a whole series of products that "include OpenSSL and Open SSL elliptic curve cryptography," including the Avaya CMS and conferencing systems.
[...] A patent cross-license that BlackBerry executed last year involved Cisco paying a "license fee," although the amount was confidential. In May, BlackBerry CEO John Chen told investors on an earnings call that he was in "patent licensing mode," eager to monetize his company's 38,000 patents.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimios on Saturday August 06 2016, @04:28PM
The writing has been on the wall for a while now. RIP Blackberry, disinfect the needles less you become another SCO.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Saturday August 06 2016, @05:06PM
EXACTLY what I was just about to comment. RIM is the new SCO.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Saturday August 06 2016, @05:26PM
I think a good difference is that old blackberry products are still useful if you keep within the context of what they are used for.
I just bought one off ebay to replace an older smartphone of mine, and it works fantastically for this purpose.
I get emails, MMS, SMS, IM clients, can make calls, can use it as a hotspot, and it isn't capable enough to display modern ads. I have never seen an advertisement once on it.
Of course, I disabled java script and cookies and turned off the GPS, but that doesn't prevent displaying the old type of punch the money and win a free ipod types of ads that were prevalent of its era. Perhaps because those simple ads are gone now, simpler devices have no ads left to display.
It works fine to get the weather and news... I can read forums like this with no problem. It does everything I would want a modest smartphone to do. For anything else... I have other tools for that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday August 06 2016, @05:41PM
Yeah, But how is that different than any other obsolete phone? I have an ancient iphone I use only as a Sip handset.
The only thing Blackberry ever had going for them was their encrypted message service, and once they started handing those keys over to every government on earth their only claim to fame was gone.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Saturday August 06 2016, @09:26PM
I don't suppose it's any better -- but it isn't any worse, and it was inexpensive.
I've thought about getting some pretty basic phones that receive SMS and can make calls, but I generally have come to depend on the email availability -- for mostly personal life (work stuff is seperate as needed).
There are $50 devices out there that are not blackberry and are smartphones; I had really wanted to try the last Palms that came out. I have had no intention of giving into the Google singularity, although I occasionally use some outdated tablets to get around on the internet without having signed into anything (and those things try to rat me out anyway via sending all my DNS queries to google servers... had to block that at the network edge. They didn't give the OS out for free because of altruism! I'd run something else on the hardware if it was worth the time to do).
I actually also have an old iPaq I won from Microsoft many years ago, and use it for nethack and some bluetooth stuff -- it has too weak of a processor to do as you stated as you do with your iphone; a sip handset... but it almost was good enough. I could hear but it couldn't encode well...
Instead, since its utility is now pretty limited, I use it to play Nethack, and it can do this really well... When bored, I sometimes dig it out, as I've come to prefer that version than the PC version.
I have tried Nethack on my android tablets, and even bought a stylus that lets me have finer control over the game... but it still seems wonky on Android compared to the ipaq version.