THE other day we wrote about how software patents help marginalise producing companies, hurting the market in the process. Moving on to another example, RIM got surrounded by so many patent vultures that its very existence is at stake. RIM's problems are described as follows: "I am not sure what it is recently but it seems like the whole tech industry has been subjected to parasitic patent trolls. The latest in line is Mobile Telecommunications Technologies who has sued RIM using their acquired portfolio of former SkyTel Communications patents including five patents. Here is how TheStar describes the patents in question registered between 1996-1999..."

Here is an important report. And more recently, this article [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] led to other reports which make one wonder if RIM can survive at all. To quote: "A federal jury in San Francisco has found beleaguered Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd. liable for $147.2 million in damages for infringing on patents held by Mformation Technologies Inc."

This is a patent lawsuit over sofwtare, not hardware [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. If RIM goes under due to this lawsuit (as some people hypothesise), what will supporters of software patents have to say? ⬆