[Hamp]

Found this story posted on MSN website:

Kevin Maney wonders, if John McCain didn't invent the BlackBerry, who did?

It wasn't Research in Motion, the company that makes the BlackBerry. RIM had to pay more than $600 million to settle a patent lawsuit by patent holding company NTP over the BlackBerry service.

A man named Geoff Goodfellow published the idea of sending wireless e-mail to a device back in 1982. But he doesn't get any money for his idea these days.

Motorola pioneered wireless e-mail in the early 1990s with the PageWriter.

Lots of people invented wireless e-mail, Maney concludes, but none of them were elected officials.

Here's the original link:
Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money

Do You BlackBerry?

[Hrshycro]

I "wish" I had invented them...

[HAB_fan]

Al Gore I think? (right after he invented the internet)

[wikes82]

without doubt... John McCain the computer illiterate

[Reed McLay]

BlackBerry was created by Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in the late '90's.

The first devices were fancy pagers, two way communications was revolutionary for the times.

BlackBerry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device introduced in 1997 as a two-way pager. The more commonly known smartphone BlackBerry, which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services, was released in 2002. ...

In 2000, NTP sent notice of their wireless email patents to a number of companies and offered to license the patents to them. None of the companies took a license. NTP brought a patent infringement lawsuit against one of the companies, Research in Motion, ...

During the trial, RIM tried to show that a functional wireless email system was already in the public domain at the time the NTP inventions had been made. This would have invalidated the NTP patents. The prior system was called System for Automated Messages (SAM). RIM demonstrated SAM in court and it appeared to work. But the NTP attorneys discovered that RIM was not using vintage SAM software, but a more modern version that came after NTP's inventions were made. Therefore the judge instructed the jury to disregard the demonstration as invalid. ...

On March 3, 2006, after a stern warning from Judge Spencer, RIM and NTP announced that they had settled their dispute. Under the terms of the settlement, RIM has agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million (USD) in a “full and final settlement of all claims.” In a statement, RIM said that “all terms of the agreement have been finalized and the litigation against RIM has been dismissed by a court order this afternoon. The agreement eliminates the need for any further court proceedings or decisions relating to damages or injunctive relief.” The settlement is believed low by some analysts, because of the absence of any future royalties on the technology in question.

[BlackBerryBob]

BlackBerry was created by Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in the late '90's.

The first devices were fancy pagers, two way communications was revolutionary for the times.

BlackBerry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's right...blame the addiction on Canada!