Technology for Business Sake

Here is a great new Radio Show that is hosted by my good friends Brent Leary and Michael Thomas. You can listen to them weekly on Business Radio 1160 WCFO in Atlanta GA. They are looking to help small businesses take advantage of all the great things that technology has to offer. They will be talking about everything from how to choose the best CRM software/service to how to use the email on your Blackberry device more effectively. Take a listen to their first shows below.

Blackberry Email in Jeopardy

I have a client of mine that is very concerned that his Blackberry phone will not have the feature that he purchase the phone for in the first place. This whole patent infringement with the company NTP, Inc.

According to Gartner Dataquest's Todd Kort and various documents associated with the Research In Motion Ltd. case, the patent in question relates to work that NTP Inc.'s founder, Thomas Campana, did in the late 1980s as a subcontractor for AT&T Corp. AT&T wanted to add wireless e-mail features to its new Safari laptop computer, which it had acquired as a part of its purchase of computer maker NCR.

Campana had developed and patented a method of sending e-mail messages to wireless pagers, and it was a natural fit for AT&T. However, at the last minute, Kort said, AT&T decided not to use Campana's technology, and he lost a considerable amount of money as a result.

"So Campana and his guys sat on the [patents] for years," said Kort, until his holding company, NTP, contacted RIM in January 2000 regarding the patents. However, RIM claims that NTP "did not readily demonstrate any support for potential patent infringement." NTP filed suit against RIM in 2001.

"It's a little bit distasteful," Kort said of NTP's patent crusade, which he said is likely to extend beyond RIM to other companies with similar technology.

"What's happening is NTP is going back in time, asking people who have theoretically been violating their patents to pay up."

Even though my client does not have backup plan just yet I am going ask all who read this to make comments and suggestions on what the current blackberry users should do just in case this battle with NTP does not go their way.

Check out this article by Eric B. Parizo the editor of searchmobilecomputing.com to get additional information on this topic.