The New Yorker takes on the legal battle between NTP and Research In Motion (maker of the BlackBerry). We've covered this case many times in the past, but this article focuses on what started it all--the US Patent Office pushing through poor patents from NTP.
Unfortunately, the real innovations in this case are not technological but legal. N.T.P. is a company without employees or products. It never tried to build a real business around its patents, and it never licensed them to others, until R.I.M. demonstrated just how lucrative wireless e-mail could be.
Another interesting figure from the article is that after review, the patent office has (in preliminary rulings) rejected all 1900 claims from 8 patents by NTP.