Saturday, 4 March 2006
Breaking news is that Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry, has settled its dispute with NTP for $612.5m. This is higher than the $450m settlement reached a year ago, which was later invalidated by a judge.
Given what I have previously written about the dispute, plus the more recent news last month that more NTP patents had been invalidated, it looks as though RIM has finally blinked.
According to the AP, the judge appears to have contributed;
At the hearing, Judge James R. Spencer expressed impatience with RIM and urged a settlement.
“He basically questioned the sanity of RIM, and said it wasn’t acting very rationally,†said Rod Thompson, patent attorney at Farella, Braun and Martel in San Francisco. “His prodding of the parties worked.â€
It will be very interesting to see what we later learn about this deal, provided anything escapes from the usual confidentiality restrictions in settlement deeds…
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One Response to “RIM settles BlackBerry dispute with NTP”
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March 5th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Techdirt has an update on the settlement, reporting, from the Washington Post. To quote Techdirt: “there is no contingency for return payments or a new lawsuit, should the USPTO eventually find the patents invalid — as has been looking increasingly likely. In fact, RIM’s Jim Balsillie says he would have paid more to have such a contingency, but it appears NTP wasn’t interested (suggesting that even they know how weak their stance is on these patents).”