Innovate or Litigate: The Wireless Version

[Russ Smith]

"For any mobile device, cellular phone, PDA or laptop that's able to roam between any current or future mobile network and Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or any other wireless LAN network, they will have to pay a licensing fee to us" said Calypso Wireless chairman Carlos Mendoza. That's how Calypso Wireless intends to protect it's patent on wireless "roaming" connectivity. Calypso announced that, as of last week it had begun contacting Nokia , Ericsson, Motorola and other companies to inform them of the patent.

If Calypso was only intending to protect its ASNAP (Automatic Switching of Network Access Points), which lets devices automatically switch protocols without dropping the connection, this wouldn't be a problem. But Robert Leon, CTO of Calypso, who invented the technology, said he wrote the patent to cover switching between any protocols.

In my opinion, this is yet another example of someone being allowed to write a patent which prevents innovation. By his own admission, Leon's patent isn't written to protect his intellectual property, but to prevent someone else from using any remotely similar idea. That's an abuse of patent law. It's litigation over innovation. Unfortunately, it may still be sucessful.

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by Russ Smith
In my opinion, this is yet another example of someone being allowed to write a patent which prevents innovation. By his own admission, Leon's patent isn't written to protect his intellectual property, but to prevent someone else from using any remotely similar idea. That's an abuse of patent law. It's litigation over innovation. Unfortunately, it may still be sucessful.
If ASNAP was in fact a "good" patent, then Calypso did innovate. Now they're trying to protect that innovation, although whether they're overreaching is certainly open for debate.

Remember that it's in any company's best interests to try to have their patents interpreted as broadly as possible, both for licensing fees and as portfolio swapping bait. It's in other companies' interests to try to have that patent interpreted as narrowly as possible.

So who draws the line where the patent ends? There are really only three choices -- negotiation, litigation and arbitration. Maybe there should be an independent patent arbitration board, but that's a whole new can of worms.

While "litigation over innovation" is catchy, remember that if litigation were considered something that should never be done, we wouldn't have patents at all.

There are certainly plenty of bad patents out there, but at least this one may be in the ballpark.

Steve