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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 07 2018, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the imaginary-property dept.

Today on this March 6, 2018, this Reuters article describes:

BlackBerry Ltd on Tuesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against social media platforms Facebook Inc and its units WhatsApp and Instagram.

BlackBerry said Facebook and its companies developed "competing applications that improperly used BlackBerry's mobile messaging intellectual property".

There are more details on the lawsuit at Ars Technica:

BlackBerry, the once-great smartphone maker that exited the hardware business in 2016, is suing Facebook for patent infringement. BlackBerry owns a portfolio of broad software patents that cover some of the most basic features of modern smartphone messaging services—and the company says it wants Facebook to pay up.

[...] BlackBerry began its own campaign of patent litigation in 2016, suing the little-known Android phone maker BLU and the Internet telephony company Avaya. BLU agreed to pay up last year, and BlackBerry is now moving on to Facebook—potentially a much more lucrative target.

BlackBerry is asserting seven software patents against Facebook, and they're remarkably broad:

  • Patent 7,372,961 covers the concept of generating a cryptographic key by choosing a pseudorandom number and then checking if it is "less than order q prior to reducing mod q." If it is, the key is used. If not, another key is chosen at random and the process repeats.
  • Patent 8,209,634 covers the concept of using icons with numeric badges to signal the arrival of new messages.
  • Patent 8,279,173 covers the concept of tagging people in photos using an auto-completing search box.
  • Patent 8,301,713 covers the concept of marking a significant lull in a text message conversation by inserting a timestamp reflecting the time of the next message.
  • Patent 8,429,236 covers the concept of changing how a mobile device sends messages depending on whether they're being actively read by the recipient's device. For example, if updates aren't being read in real time, then the sending device may be able to conserve power by sending messages in batches rather than one at a time.
  • Patent 8,677,250 covers the concept of tying a messaging service and a game application together so that a user playing a game can send messages to contacts on the messaging app that includes updates on the player's progress in the game.
  • Patent 9,349,120 covers the concept of muting a message thread.

How fitting it is that today is the 15th anniversary of the SCO vs IBM lawsuit.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:24PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:24PM (#649015)

    Patent 7,372,961 covers the concept of generating a cryptographic key by choosing a pseudorandom number and then checking if it is "less than order q prior to reducing mod q." If it is, the key is used. If not, another key is chosen at random and the process repeats.

    Sounds like basic key generation to me. Plenty of prior art there.

    Patent 8,279,173 covers the concept of tagging people in photos using an auto-completing search box.

    Let me guess, they added "using an auto-completing search box" to a patent on tagging people in photos likely held by Spybook. I wonder if I can get a patent for using a drop-down list to tag people...

    Patent 8,301,713 covers the concept of marking a significant lull in a text message conversation by inserting a timestamp reflecting the time of the next message.

    This has to be the biggest load of bullshit in that list. IRC has been doing that for, what, four decades now?

    Patent 8,677,250 covers the concept of tying a messaging service and a game application together so that a user playing a game can send messages to contacts on the messaging app that includes updates on the player's progress in the game.

    IRC to the rescue again. Is IRC a messaging service? (If not, what exactly makes it NOT a messaging service?) I had a mod that tied the in-game chatter in Unreal Tournament 2004 into an IRC client such that all in-game chatter ended up in a chosen channel on IRC. This was back in 2005. I recall other games did that as well as we had a few channels on the main network I was on dedicated to exactly that. Patent date looks to be 2006, well after these games were tied in to IRC.

    Patent 9,349,120 covers the concept of muting a message thread.

    /mode #PatentTrolls +m-v RIM

    And for good measure (been a while, syntax may be off)
    /mode #PatentTrolls +b RIM!*@* GTFO
    /kick RIM GTFO

    Fuckers. And people wonder why I have absolutely zero respect for imaginary property laws.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:30PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:30PM (#649019) Journal

    Is IRC a messaging service?

    Nope. Along with emacs and firefox, IRC ascended into the realm of OS-es.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:37PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:37PM (#649022) Journal

    Hey, I did put from the "imaginary-property" department in the submission. :-)

    --
    To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 07 2018, @08:11PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 07 2018, @08:11PM (#649144) Homepage Journal

    Patent 8,677,250 covers the concept of tying a messaging service and a game application together so that a user playing a game can send messages to contacts on the messaging app that includes updates on the player's progress in the game.

    IRC to the rescue again. Is IRC a messaging service? (If not, what exactly makes it NOT a messaging service?) I had a mod that tied the in-game chatter in Unreal Tournament 2004 into an IRC client such that all in-game chatter ended up in a chosen channel on IRC. This was back in 2005. I recall other games did that as well as we had a few channels on the main network I was on dedicated to exactly that. Patent date looks to be 2006, well after these games were tied in to IRC.

    The game nethack (or was it rogue) could intercept Unix's incoming mail in the 70's already, and present it to the player as a scroll.