During my time covering the computer industry I have come across several Canadian success stories. These stories have come from the actions of corporations, resellers and individuals.
Canada has a great history in IT. The Waterloo, Ont., region of the country produces some of the finest, brightest
IT talent in the world. Companies such as IBM and Microsoft recruit from there all the time.
Canadians have been credited with some incredible breakthroughs in IT such as Java and XML. They may even lay claim to the first desktop PC, if you believe Mers Kutt.
But even though this magazine waves the Canadian flag some Canadian companies do not. Classic examples are Corel and Nortel who in the past have told American customers they were based in the U.S. and not Canada.
This always puzzled me because you never see Americans saying there are from Brazil or Germans saying they are Swiss. Maybe it is the fact we speak the same language or maybe it is the inferiority complex Canadians have, but I have always found the practice to be distasteful.
Which brings me to Research In Motion (RIM) and its latest troubles.
Back in 2002, RIM, which makes the popular BlackBerry handheld devices, was sued for patent infringement violation by NTP.
A year later it lost in a Virginia federal court and was ordered to pay NTP more than US$50 million in damages. The court also banned BlackBerry sales in the U.S., even though they are very popular.
According to RIM, there are more than one million BlackBerry users in the U.S. alone.
One of them is CBS newsman John Roberts, who is Canadian and used to work at CTV as J.D. Roberts.
Not that Roberts made a difference, but the ruling on the U.S. ban was overturned near the end of 2003.
RIM is continuing its fight to overturn the earlier patent infringement ruling by implementing a unique strategy. Its lawyers are arguing that patent laws are territorial, and the fact that RIM is based in Waterloo and its relay server is also based there makes NTP’s original suit irrelevant.
Simply stated, it will try to persuade the court that U.S. patents do not apply to Canadians.
I for one agree. Canada is a distinct country with its own laws and regulations. It is not RIM’s fault that many Americans enjoy their products and want to subscribe to its service.
More important, in my view, is that RIM, by proudly being Canadian, may help them resolve a messy, possibly expensive situation. Let’s hope the folks at Nortel learn a lesson from this.
For Corel, well, they got their wish. They have been acquired by an American company even though their base of operations is still in our nation’s capital.
