On August 17, 2012, BriarTek IP filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission that alleges that Delorme's and Yellowbrick's 2-way Satellite Emergency Notification Devices (SENDs) infringe upon a BriarTek patent and should be barred from importation. BriarTek admits their goal is to pressure 2-way SEND manufacturers to license their patent. There's a lot more to this story, including questions as to the validity of BriarTek's patent.

http://www.equipped.org/blog/?p=504

One more case for why current patent law is crap.

At first blush they look like another patent troll.

Not really a patent troll, as that definition specifies a troll as a patent holder who doesn't actually have or intend to have a product to market utilizing the patented technology they claim. BriarTek at least has a SEND device on the market now, and they were members of the relevant RTCM committee.

Doug you have my sympathies, this is the dilemma of every standards organization. You might ask your legal counsel if the following amendment might have caught BriarTek's claim at an earlier juncture: “The ballot to approve every RTCM standard shall ask the member to identify **IN WRITING** any applicable patents **ISSUED OR PENDING** they are aware of which are not identified in the standard.” Patent law is way more complicated than I can really understand, but we wrote our own bylaws to attempt to compel everyone voting on a standard or guideline to disclose a patent interest before approving the standard. Its damned miserable to look around a room and realize someone working with you in the standards effort may have embedded their novel idea into your standard and are awaiting ratification to seek compensation for it. In an industry where innovation takes place among numerous companies outside the standards body, this is a constant risk (or, temptation for patent holders everywhere).

I should have put it like this- they look like Apple, another company with no problem patenting obvious things, seeking blanket patents for whole categories of vague ideas and calendars that don't match the rest of the world.

Maybe so, I don't know - at the moment to me this is just another guy driving a Blue Ford, hardly enough to brand them either a miscreant or having a valid patent claim. I think sometimes people's frustration with the complexity of patents derives from the complexity of technology, and any time we see something we don't really understand or can't differentiate from another technology we may understand better, we leap to an assumption of obviousness and begin to ascribe motives. To me everyone in the field of PLBs are driving Blue Fords. I wish they would all get along and cooperate on standards and such, but sometimes like in many other fields, that ain't gonna happen.

It's hard to believe that all of the satellite telephones over the years don't make considerable prior-art here. And that's a pretty recent patent.

But I'm retired now and refuse to read another patent. A root canal is more fun.

Patent law is about the most respectable areas of the law. If a guy invents something and can prove it in front of a lot super smart people, the inventor deserves the spoils. A patent that is worth anything must go through the grind of many years of investigation, probing, and proving itself. By the time we see news about a patent, it has already gone through years, maybe over a decade, of scrutiny. Patent law encourages innovation because it costs a lot of money to innovate and chase a dream. It even costs a lot of money to sit around and think of inventions, even if the inventor never produces a product. There would be LITTLE INCENTIVE for companies and their inventors to innovate if they could not capitalize on an invention. Thus, there would be far less innovation without our patent law system.

I believe that if someone invents something truly unique and non-obvious they deserve to benefit from its commercial success. But what I see here is an obvious application of an existing technology.

For those who feel strongly either way, I recommend preparing an amicus brief for the court, or prepare a brief and send it to the law firm representing the party you believe. The court system is where patent matters are decided.