The Canadian company Research In Motion, which operates the mobile e-mail service BlackBerry, does not have to stop there for the time being. RIM was accused by the American company NTP of having infringed five of its patents with BlackBerry, and in a 2002 lawsuit the jury ruled in favor of NTP. RIM appealed, but last month the Supreme Court upheld the 2002 verdict. RIM had argued that US patent law did not apply because the service’s servers were not located in the US. However, the Supreme Court found that the fact that the service was offered in the US made it subject to US patents.
NTP filed a lawsuit in which the company demanded that RIM stop the BlackBerry service in the US, stop selling the equipment and pay $126 million in damages. However, RIM has fought back and asked the US Patent Office to invalidate NTP’s patents. Last week, the patent office declared two of the five patents invalid; the other three are suspected to be invalid, but investigations are ongoing. NTP can also appeal against the declaration of invalidity. RIM asked the judge to postpone the ruling until there was definitive clarity about the patents, but Judge James Spencer rejected this request. The investigation into the patents could take months or even years, and the jury had ruled patent infringement more than three years ago. Spencer did postpone the ruling indefinitely and urged the parties to reach a settlement.
RIM and NTP had already reached a difficult settlement last year, but it broke down, so that the judge had to intervene again. Incidentally, NTP has much more to gain from a settlement than from a BlackBerry ban. NTP does not make any equipment itself; the company runs solely on the exploitation of patents. Banning BlackBerry won’t make NTP richer; of a settlement. BlackBerry has over three million users in the US, including many government agencies. Shutdown of the service would make many government agencies unreachable until they could use a replacement service. RIM used this as an argument to dismiss NTP’s claim, but Judge Spencer was not very sensitive to this. Analysts expect it to eventually reach a settlement.