Will BlackBerry go out of season?

[Crankie Avalon]

Will BlackBerry go out of season?
An intellectual property lawsuit could silence the ever-present hand-held e-mail device.

By Sam Natapoff

Jan. 25, 2006 | For everyone who ever wished that BlackBerrys were illegal, they soon could be. The ubiquitous hand-held e-mail-phone devices often provoke rage in would-be conversation partners, disgust in onlookers, and fury in those forced to endure their incessant beeping.

But Type A workaholics everywhere are in agony, as a mano a mano battle brews over this ostentatious icon of the information elite. In one corner is Research in Motion Ltd., the Canadian firm in Waterloo, Ontario, that created and manufactures BlackBerrys. In the other is NTP Inc., a small Virginia-based U.S. patent firm that apparently holds the patent on BlackBerry's wireless transmission of e-mail.

The fight cuts to the heart of the battle over intellectual property rights in an information economy. With rising competition at home and abroad, companies are desperately trying to stay current by offering new, innovative goods such as hand-helds, downloadable music, and satellite radio, all at sonic speeds of production. But the obsession with novelty is risky business when it is often unclear whether someone else may already own the idea.

NTP's patents concern wireless transmission of e-mail by radio frequency to a mobile receiver like a BlackBerry. The patents were initially registered by NTP founder Thomas Campana, in 1991, to patent a wireless communication system he created for his original pager company. NTP holds that BlackBerry is encroaching on NTP's patents in its wireless e-mail delivery to its hand-helds. BlackBerry insists its proprietary software does not impinge upon NTP's territory...

More: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/01/25/blackberry/

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OK, so in this particular instance the parasitic "company" that produces NOTHING and exists only to try and SPONGE off actual innovators is the American company, while the innovators and producers are the Canadian company. Could someone who knows more about these things tell me if I should be surprised at this, or is this sort of thing a parable for what America's present and future contributions to the world's technological and other advances will be from now on?