Tag archive: patent and trademark office

The day before Canadian BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and patent holding company NTP are set to go before a federal judge who may order the U.S. shutdown of the BlackBerry service, the war of words between the two camps has escalated. In a statement to the press today, NTP claims RIM has “inaccurately characterized” NTP's patents as invalid. NTP acknowledges the patents are undergoing a reexamination process, but… Read More

U.S. District Judge James Spencer has denied a Department of Justice request for a separate hearing to address government concerns over a possible shutdown of the wireless BlackBerry service in the United States. The DOJ is concerned about the impact of a BlackBerry shutdown on the estimated 1 million government workers who use the service. Although government workers would, in theory, be exempt from a shutdown order, the DOJ wanted an… Read More

Canada's Research in Motion has announced its contingency plan to keep its BlackBerry wireless service operating in the United States even if the company loses the bitter patent dispute with NTP Holdings. The patent dispute between RIM and NTP continues to generate drama: the U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear RIM's appeal of an injunction which would shut down BlackBerry service in the United States. In the meantime,… Read More

“Napster says the patents are invalid based on prior art and has requested that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office re-examine them. Last month a federal judge in Pennsylvania denied SightSound's request for a preliminary injunction and stayed its lawsuit pending action by the PTO. SightSound is appealing the ruling. Napster attorney Charles Verhoeven said the case has implications for other online subscription services,… Read More

“Though very little came of the new hardware in the end, Nintendo had grand plans for the 64DD expansion to its Nintendo 64 console, according to a patent application recently found in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database. Patent 6,769,989, granted August 3, 2004 (but first applied for all the way back in 1998) contains the blueprint for a remarkably multitalented game machine.   The system described in the… Read More