08.05.16

Even Corporate Media Calls BlackBerry a Patent Troll

Posted in America, Patents at 8:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The IP Hawk on BlackBerry

Summary: Transition from production to so-called ‘licensing’ (i.e. patent shakedown), as Microsoft has been doing against Android/Linux/ChromeOS, compared publicly to patent trolling

BlackBerry is gradually becoming more of a patent troll. We warned about this several years ago and now it’s officially happening. We wrote about this earlier in the day yesterday and shortly afterwards we found the article “The New Patent Troll: BlackBerry” (via The IP Hawk, who actually wrote it).

What’s nice to see here is that our prediction was correct. It’s sad to see once-practicing companies resorting to these tactics because their sales or market share are minuscule and products not compelling/competitive anymore.

Yesterday we mentioned Forbes suggesting that it’s possible Nintendo can come under many software patent lawsuits. Some in the patent-centric press are now wondering aloud if Nintendo will use patents for revenue, as means of deriving money from Pokemon GO:

With all due respect, this blogger remains skeptical about these several expressions of seemingly limitless optimism for Nintendo’s IP potential on mobile. He can never forget the valuation of nearly $2.5 billion dollars or more that was coming from the investment community in 2011 regarding the Kodak patent portfolio, here. When the dust settled in the court-managed proceedings, the patent portfolio was sold for only approximately $500 million dollars, here. This blogger has not deviated from the sense that the initial estimate was as much (or more) about hope, prayer, and investment house spin as an indication of genuine market value.

For that reason, when Mr. Fischer suggests that the company can unlock IP licensing revenues—of company patents– ranging from $290 million to $570 million, this blogger needs to ask: What is there in the company’s patent portfolio (separate apart from licensing of the character rights), that supports such an amount? Indeed, how is the value of this estimate range reached?

Well, software patents haven’t a foothold anymore, so suggesting that companies will shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for these is totally disconnected from reality. As for BlackBerry, it is suing in Texas now, perhaps hoping that this defunct and bias ‘legal’ system would favour its patents (which to be fair include quite a few hardware patents, not just software patents). █

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