Blackberry Patent Case Won’t Hurt E-Mail Addicts

Blackberries are the device of the wired generation. Up and down Wall Street and other such places, men and women walk along punching buttons to send and receive e-mails, organize their lives and otherwise build up their own sense of self-importance. The fact that a patent dispute may crash the entire Blackberry empire has many of them in tears. There is, of course, only miscalculation to fear, as no one gains if the case isn’t settled.

Research In Motion Ltd. [RIM] makes the handy little device, but NTP Inc. holds vital patents. The dispute was litigated in favor of NTP in 2001-2002, and NTP got $23 million in damages. In 2003, a district judge, for reasons that are boring and irrelevant here, boosted the award to $210 million and slapped RIM with an injunction, which was set aside pending appeals. A year ago, an appeals court upheld the district court, and the parties settled the whole thing for $450 million.

The final settlement, though, wasn’t finally final. RIM pulled out over the summer after discovering that NTP believed the deal wasn’t closed. Now, RIM went back to court to force the settlement and to re-examine the patent issue. The court said “no.” So, RIM is preparing software work-arounds, and is hoping that no injunction against it gets issued.

And one won’t if everyone sticks to enlightened self-interest. RIM has no interest in seeing its business closed down, even temporarily. NTP is a patent-holding company but is not a competitor. There is growing competition in the market, so anything that undermines the usefulness of the Blackberry system will ultimately hurt NTP. So, if both parties can avoid ego, emotion and excessive demands, a deal serves all interests.

RIM still isn’t out of the woods because it is in hearings in the UK over patent issues involving a company called Inpro Licensing. However, the situation there seems to be the same, a matter of getting the price right. So, the big shots can still stay connected and send out orders to their minions from the yacht or the golf links. Of course, if they were truly big shots, they’d have someone else doing it for them.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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