Inside the BlackBerry Workaround

pillageplunder writes "Businessweek has a pretty good FAQ-style article on the proposed workaround that RIM would implement if a judge upholds an injunction." From the article: "It would work by changing the part of the network where e-mails are stored. Right now, when someone is out of wireless coverage range and can't immediately get e-mail access, RIM's service stores incoming messages on computers at one of its two network operations centers, or NOCs. When you come back into coverage range, those e-mails are forwarded to you automatically. "

Re:Text Messaging?

[GNU(slash)Nickname]

Well yes. It is prior art.

Prior art that NTP holds a patent on.

Re:Explain this please

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

They are stringing this out as long as they can. The patent will expire in a few more years.

Operators = Cellular Network Providers

[Kadin2048]

When you get a Blackberry, you don't get it just from RIM.

RIM makes the devices themselves, but not the networks that they access. If you wanted to get a BB today, you'd go down to your local cellphone company of choice (well, of the ones that support the device you want to buy), and buy the handset and service from them. You might be able to buy the BlackBerry itself separately, but you're still going to need to go to a cell phone company to get service.

So you go to TMobile or whatever. They are the "operator." They have a system, also purchased from BlackBerry, which handles talking to your handheld device through their cellular network, and sending it email. When somebody sends an email to your BlackBerry's address, it goes first to RIM, and then to the cell-phone company's system, and then to your device. I'm not too familiar with how the BlackBerry system works (the changes in response to the patent involve where the email is being stored), but basically one of the reasons why RIM has been so successful, is that they make life pretty easy for the cellular carriers to offer BB service to their customers.

So the GP was speculating that this change might make life more difficult for the cellular carriers.

Re:Why not store at the client end anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM uses authenticated Diffie-Hellman key exchange, which is designed specifically to allow the key exchange data to be 'in the clear' and not be compromised. The older (pre 4.0) devices required a cradle or cable connection to exchange keys.

The RIM NOC has no idea what the keys are, and cannot see that data even if it is sitting in their NOC.