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Blackberry Future Uncertain
Dave White writes "Research In Motion and NTP have failed to reach a settlement in the Blackberry case. It looks like the door has been opened for NTP to be granted an injunction blocking the sales of Blackberry wireless messaging devices in the US. The New York Times (free registration yadda yadda) has the scoop on this interesting development."
RIM and NTP Reach An Impasse
Research In Motion said it has reached an impasse with NTP Inc. in finalizing a patent dispute settlement and would take court action.
The two sides had reached a settlement in March with RIM agreeing to pay $450 million to NTP to settle the patent litigation. In return, RIM was granted an unfettered right to continue its BlackBerry-related business without further interference from NTP or its patents. "We are extremely disappointed and I am personally extremely disappointed that this matter which we believed was resolved has been reopened by NTP," Jim Balsillie, RIM chairman and chief executive, said in a conference call.
He also emphasized the terms agreed to in March "were clear and unambiguous. "For nearly three months now, RIM has been working in good faith to complete the process and obtain the final license and settlement documents," Balsillie said. According to RIM, NTP refuses to honor its obligations under the term sheet and finalize the definitive documents. Calls to NTP went unanswered. RIM said while it is unsure of the outcome of the court's decision, it is reviewing any potential accounting implications and has already set aside and will continue holding on to the funds to make the settlement payment.
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." -- Abraham Lincoln
always wondered how well that would work...
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
...That this is the first site/article I've opened on my blacberry in a week. Sure wish /. Had a more mobile-friendly format. Actually, I'll take /. Working in my firefox first!
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
it's more like NTP's patents are DOA, and RIM doesn't owe them a plug nickel ...
Question Authority before IT questions You
This is a very very sad case.
Why in the world is a company like NTP even allowed to exist. Why are ppl given patents before even coming up with a product.
I think what NTP has done/is currently doing is very wrong. Why should a company like NTP that just dreams up ideas and does nothing to actually develop them being given patents? They do very little to foster innovation. They do very little to employ people. They pretty much do jack diddly squat.
This is wrong in so many ways.
There are 3 other parties that are also responsible for the BS. The patent office that actually gave them the patent (flawed patent system), the corrupt law firm representing the case, and the Judge who ruled on this case and cannot see right from wrong.
You do realize that this patent could affect the Treo keyboard also, right? RIM and Handspring fought their own bitter legal fight over the exact same patent.
I helped my boss(*) purchase a handheld about a week ago. It was between the Blackberry and Treo 650. The sales guy was heavily pushing the Treo, but I thought the Blackberry was much better for his needs. It worked with his university calendar web site, which the Treo didn't, and the Treo has a nearly unusable keyboard compared to the Blackberry's nice one.
He bought the Blackberry and has been very happy with it so far. It accesses his email just fine even though we don't have the Blackberry server package. He just uses IMAP, which is no problem at all.
I think my T-Mobile Sidekick is still the better device for reading web pages and emails but that's because of the flip out design with the bigger screen. T-Mobile's service is erratic and so I think he made the right choice to go with the inferior device but much more reliable Verizon network.
One interesting point is that the Blackberry appears to have some form of JavaScript support, although it slows everything to a crawl. Whenever I saw a massive delay in loading a web site, the "Running JavaScript" appeared on the bottom. My Sidekick, which doesn't support JavaScript, loaded things much better, but of course many features were not available. I think the Blackberry needs a faster CPU to deal with JS issues. Hopefully one will be forthcoming.
D
(*) Far from a PHB. So we now have proof that not all Blackberry users are PHBs, despite what some of you might think.