Digital Common Sense

February 17, National Journal’s Technology Daily — Government wants court hearing on BlackBerry usage. A court adjudicating a patent spat over the BlackBerry communications device needs to hold a hearing on the technical details of exempting government users from a potential blackout, the Bush administration said Thursday, February 16. The Justice Department filing is the latest salvo in the ongoing saga over whether Judge James Spencer will order the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion to stop distributing and supporting its ubiquitous communications device in the United States. Under federal law, government users are exempt from injunctions in patent−infringement cases and instead can pay royalties. But the government is worried about the effectiveness of any technical solutions implemented to shield government BlackBerry users and its thousands of contractors from an injunction. To exempt users from a service blackout, government officials and contractors first must be identified. As outlined in the government’s brief, there appears to be several methods of doing so, but the process of collecting the information involves significant legwork.
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All this noise is really about organizations (government in this case) putting all their eggs in a single basket and not performing due diligence in contingency planning. Shame, shame, shame.

Filed by Ken at 11:03 am under Technology