The High Court has ruled that the BlackBerry service can keep running in the UK.
Research in Motion secured a legal victory on Thursday when the High Court ruled that a patent claim brought against it in the UK in relation to its BlackBerry products was invalid.
InPro, a firm based in Luxembourg which acquires and licenses patents, had claimed that RIM's BlackBerry service violated its patent for a computer system that reduces the processing power used by portable computers and other devices when accessing servers over the Internet.
InPro's patent described the use of a proxy server which downloaded data from the Web in response to a request from a device, then transposed the data to match the specific size and resolution of the device, according to The Times. The patent in question was granted in 1996. The High Court found in favour of RIM, which had argued that the patent should be revoked because the 'innovation' it described was obvious.
News source: ZDNet UK
Research in Motion secured a legal victory on Thursday when the High Court ruled that a patent claim brought against it in the UK in relation to its BlackBerry products was invalid.
InPro, a firm based in Luxembourg which acquires and licenses patents, had claimed that RIM's BlackBerry service violated its patent for a computer system that reduces the processing power used by portable computers and other devices when accessing servers over the Internet.
InPro's patent described the use of a proxy server which downloaded data from the Web in response to a request from a device, then transposed the data to match the specific size and resolution of the device, according to The Times. The patent in question was granted in 1996. The High Court found in favour of RIM, which had argued that the patent should be revoked because the 'innovation' it described was obvious.
News source: ZDNet UK
Indeed, even if it was in 1996. I made a similar kind of thing (ISAPI dll, wasn't pretty, hogged server resources, more a proof of concept) in 1999 to differentiate between WebTV and IE. I guess that makes me a patent violator.
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