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Originally Posted by mikegold
How can they be guilty of infringing upon patents that the Patent Office says do not exist?
Seems like it is now moot.
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From
http://www.eetuk.com/bus/news/showAr...leID=177102817 and other places:
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RIM has asked U.S. Judge James Spencer to delay his injunction until the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) rules on the validity of the patents. But Judge Spencer has said in the past that PTO rulings have no bearing on his court's infringement rulings.
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The Patent Office's decision to invalidate a patent doesn't erase the fact that the patent existed. The patent proves that NTP created the technology and created it before RIM used it in the BB.
That's all that matters to the court. The decision of whether or not the technology can be considered NTP's intellectual property and not prior art is ultimately up to the court. After all, the patent office is not a legal court - it's just a committee. A company that registers a patent doesn't automatically have a legal right to that technology. The patent just acts like a receipt that proves the company came up with that specific technology at a certain date. It's up to the court to decide whether or not the patent is enforceable. And unfortunately in this case, the court and several appellate courts have decided that NTP's patents are enforceable and that RIM is infringing.