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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: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday March 07 2018, @10:29PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 07 2018, @10:29PM (#649205) Journal

    Software patents are ridiculous. They end up protecting very basic ideas that are easy to implement. This Blackberry lawsuit is an example.

    Some food for thought as to why patenting ways to put things together is a bad idea:

    - Hi, welcome to ThisRestaruant. I'll be your server. What are you having today?
    - I'll have the BLT.
    - I'm sorry, SomeOtherRestaurant has the software food patent on "Using bacon to offset the health benefits of vegetables," so we legally can't make food like that. Legal would kill us!
    - How about a Reuben?
    - Well, ReubensRestaurantHoldings still holds the software food patent on "A method for combining roast beef and sauerkraut into a bread-conveyed device", so...
    - Didn't that one expire?
    - No, that was their earlier one, "A method for combining bread and sauerkraut into a roast beef-conveyed device."
    - Ah. Okay, something simple like a ham sandwich then.
    - Oh, I'm so sorry, BeingADickIncorporated actually sued us last year for using cured, prepared pork products in violation of their totally valid software food patent.
    - Who're they?
    - A "software food patent holdings" group. They used to make phones that did email, but changed their business model and their name when people stopped buying their products.
    - They don't even make software food ?
    - No, but they hold the sacred trust of software food patents on how to combine things to make a finished product. It's a very valuable role.
    - Doesn't sound like it.
    - Well, no, but that is what legal makes us say. Anyway, what can I get you for lunch?
    - Is there anything you can legally serve me?
    - Well, arguably, no, even the software food that we ourselves have patented probably violates innumerable other silly patents. That's the consequence of allowing patents on any step of making any recipe, I guess.
    - You people are insane.

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