The U.S. government is
moving in the right direction with its efforts to reform its patent
process by making it tougher for companies claiming infringement to
get court injunctions, said a top executive at Research In Motion
(RIM) Ltd., which settled its own patent fight in
March.
The Ontario-based RIM, maker
of the popular BlackBerry wireless device, is encouraged by the
U.S. Supreme Court's ruling this month saying courts need to look
at several factors instead of awarding near-automatic injunctions
against the sale of products found to infringe patents, said Jim
Balsillie, RIM's chairman and co-chief executive officer, during a
speech Wednesday. The court sided with eBay Inc. in a patent
infringement case brought by online auction company MercExchange
LLC.
But Balsillie, whose company
agreed in March to pay US$612.5 million to NTP Inc. to settle a
patent infringement claim, also called on the U.S. government to
push intellectual property protections worldwide. Asked by an
audience member how small software vendors could protect their
products in countries with high software piracy rates, Balsillie
said the U.S. government needs to push for intellectual property
protections while it's at its "pinnacle of
influence."
"You have a great
opportunity to lead, and there's a great need for leading these
issues globally," said Balsillie, who spoke before the Potomac
Officers Club, a networking organization for Washington, D.C., area
business executives.
However, it's too easy for
people in the U.S. to blame governments in China and Russia for
software piracy, Balsillie added. Piracy is as much a "human
condition" as a government-driven condition, he said, and many
residents of other countries face harsher economic conditions than
people in the U.S. "This is not the same kind of wealth," he
said.
Talking of U.S. patent
reform efforts, Balsillie praised the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office for looking at ways to speed up the patent re-examination
process and the U.S. Congress for considering bills to improve the
process for granting patents.
The U.S. government is
making "tremendous progress" in improving its patent system,
Balsillie said. "It's got much, much more to go," he
added.
Critics of patent reform
efforts, including independent inventors, have questioned the need
for patent reform. Efforts to take away patent injunctions and
limit the scope of patents allow large companies to steal the
patents of small inventors without fear of punishment, some small
inventors have said.
After his speech, an
audience member asked him to predict the future of video over
wireless devices, and he said it will have some uses, but it also
faces a number of limitations. Wireless data applications are just
at the beginning of their potential, but wireless spectrum has
limited capacity, and wireless devices have limited power supplies
and storage, he said. He predicted some wireless services will soon
begin to charge extra for large-bandwidth applications such as
video.
Some video applications will
take up the spectrum space of 150 wireless voice calls, he said.
"There's no free lunch in physics," he added. "You can't assume
away your limitations."
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