Gary Slinger » 2005 » November

RIM, NTP and Lawsuits - More News November 30, 2005

The “Blackberry Cool” folks have a piece here about the continuing legal troubles the Blackberry folks are facing.

Research In Motion Ltd., facing litigation that may halt its BlackBerry e-mail service in the U.S., is this week fighting a case to protect the technology in Britain. Luxembourg-based Inpro Licensing Sarl is suing Research In Motion at a London court for allegedly infringing a U.K. patent it holds relating to the relay of data between BlackBerry phones and pagers and the Internet.

If Research In Motion loses the case, it may force the Waterloo, Canada-based company and partners such as T-Mobile International AG to stop selling or supporting the devices in Britain, according to lawyers acting on the case. Research in Motion has around 375,000 BlackBerry subscribers in the U.K., around 10 percent of its global total.

But the hits just keep on coming…

U.S. District Judge James Spencer has rejected RIM’s request to delay the case and refused to enforce a previously negotiated, and then disputed, $450 million settlement with patent holder NTP Inc. He’s going to set a date to hear NTP’s request for damages, and more importantly (from a Blackberry user’s perspective) to work through the injunction request that would halt Blackberry services in the USA.

NTP’s lawyers have said that they hope these developments will bring both parties back to the negotiation/settlement table. We can but hope.

RIM has issued a press release on the matter.

technorati tags: blackberry, RIM, NTP