Judge Rules Against BlackBerry Settlement

November 30, 2005 12:37 PM

The ongoing patent dispute between the patent firm NTP and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) reached a new low today when a U.S. appellate court judge named James Spencer ruled that an earlier settlement of $450M payable to NTP was not valid as it was not finalized properly. Even though the USPO has re-opened the NTP patents and has subsequently rejected most of the patents used in the patent infringement case, RIM was seeking to uphold the earlier settlement in order to avert the possibility of all sales and services from being halted in the United States.
posted by purephase (13 comments total)

In an even more bizarre twist, RIM's largest customer - The U.S. government - has requested a 90-day stay of execution in order to build a "white-list" of employees who require the BlackBerry service to remain in operation. The latest count of affected subscribers (non-government users) is over 3 million strong and growing.

This case, along with the eBay patent dispute, is exposing the disconnect between the courts and the USPO (particularly with technology patents).
posted by purephase at 12:37 PM on November 30, 2005

If I loose my crackberry service I'll probably go insane - or just have to start showing up in the office more.
posted by evilelvis at 12:38 PM on November 30, 2005

NTP has nothing to gain from having RIM shut down. They have no competing product to protect, they just want the money. The shut-down threat merely increases their leverage in negotiating a license. All this shutting down RIM hysteria in the media makes me laugh.
posted by caddis at 1:02 PM on November 30, 2005

Yeah...but that's a helluva lot of money.
posted by RockCorpse at 1:11 PM on November 30, 2005

i hope this wipes the smug grins off the faces of the RIM employees in the parking lot down the street. i hate having to watch out for them while driving...
posted by growli at 1:14 PM on November 30, 2005

Who cares?
posted by delmoi at 1:18 PM on November 30, 2005

Why doesn't NTP just take their money and move on to their next extortion target? In terms of $$ per hour, every time they drag things out their profit goes down. Take the money and run. Then go sue Good, Nokia, Danger, HP, etc, etc.
posted by GuyZero at 1:22 PM on November 30, 2005

GuyZero: because a victory, in contrast to a settlement, would give them far more leverage over the other companies you mentioned. Every hour they spend towards winning this case will be one less hour they'll have to spend on future lawsuits.
posted by exhilaration at 2:11 PM on November 30, 2005

It is not in the best interests of NTP to stop RIM from doing business. They are angling for a larger initial payment plus a cut of future earnings. After RIM announced that they had some workaround to the patent it is debatable whether or not this strategy would actually be profitable for NTP. At the same time, if this is their goal and they do believe they can accomplish it they won't want to hurt the Blackberry image by shutting them down for any period of time.
posted by aburd at 2:15 PM on November 30, 2005

a U.S. appellate court judge named James Spencer

Judge Spencer is a trial court judge, not an appellate court judge.
posted by zipzamboom at 2:30 PM on November 30, 2005

After RIM announced that they had some workaround to the patent

All infringers claim this. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not.
posted by caddis at 4:53 PM on November 30, 2005

If I loose my crackberry service I'll probably go insane - or just have to start showing up in the office more.

shutupshutupshutup...nananananananana

There, that's better.

*returns to getting reading email in the car*
posted by thanotopsis at 4:45 AM on December 1, 2005

zipzamboom writes "James Spencer"

You're correct. It should read U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer. My mistake.

It looks like the USPO has rejected one of the NTP patents that are currently being re-examined (after they were all initially rejected).
posted by purephase at 2:24 PM on December 1, 2005