TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: In Silicon Valley, a Man Without a Patent

Re: In Silicon Valley, a Man Without a Patent

Mark Crispin (mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU)
Sat, 15 Apr 2006 23:16:10 -0700

For what it's worth, I know Geoff Goodfellow personally. I haven't
had much contact with him since 1988 or so, but I can confirm his
claims about RadioMail (nee Anterior). I remember Geoff demonstrating
it to me.

I understand perfectly well why he didn't patent it. To both of us,
and anyone else in the Internet community at the time, the idea was
obvious. The thing to make money out of was to get a gizmo built and
a service set up, and then get people to use it and pay for it.

When I first hear of RIM and Blackberry, my immediate reaction was
"how is this different from RadioMail?" I never heard of NTP, or
Thomas J. Campana, prior to them suing RIM. It's news to me that
Geoff had dealings with RIM, but I'm not particularly surprised.

To my mind, the NTP vs. RIM lawsuit was of one thief suing another
over stolen goods. I have no particular sympathy for either. NTP is
owned by lawyers now; it will eventually fade into oblivion once the
lawyers have squeezed every last bit of blood from that stone.
However, RIM was also pretty obnoxious by claiming that it had created
this technology.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

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