The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) invalidated BlackBerry’s patent 8,745,149 Wednesday and the board has now invalidated another two of BlackBerry’s patents related to smartphone technology.
The PTAB killed all of the claims in two BlackBerry patents related to graphical user interface technology and another on time-stamping technology in text messaging, finding that Google had shown by a “preponderance of the evidence” that the patents were too obvious in light of prior art..
Google challenged four BlackBerry patents last year, has now killed three of them, and is awaiting a board decision on its remaining challenge on a patent covering software security.
Once a patent is found to be invalid, a licensee has a good chance of getting out of paying future royalties, although that would depend on what both companies agreed to in their license agreement.
BlackBerry is relying heavily on it’s patents in an attempt to gain revenue. The company has also sued Snap and Facebook, and that has already been trimmed by a US Judge, who dismissed BlackBerry’s wilful infringement and indirect infringement allegations against both Facebook and Snap
Snap challenged the time stamp patent, U.S. Patent 8,301,713. arguing that courts, for one example, have been time-stamping documents for centuries and merely doing it on a computer doesn’t make it eligible for patenting.
