Deadline Looms for BlackBerry Users
Feb. 22, 2006 — -- No more communication, no more instant updates, isolation from the outside world. That's what 4 million BlackBerry customers fear if a judge cuts the service.
A five-year battle between a tiny patent holder and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion could come to a head in a Richmond, Va., courtroom Friday. That's when a federal judge will decide whether to enforce an injunction against RIM, which would shut down its wireless e-mail system.
Several years before RIM introduced its BlackBerry system, NTP Inc. owned patents to a system that could send messages from computers to wireless devices, but NTP never actually developed a system. When RIM started producing BlackBerrys in 2001, NTP launched a lawsuit.
A jury sided with NTP in 2002 and awarded the small Virginia company 5.7 percent of U.S. BlackBerry sales, which a judge later increased to 8.55 percent. A federal judge issued an injunction in 2003 but held off on enforcement during RIM's appeals, which largely failed.
So what happens on Friday if no settlement is reached and the judge enforces the injunction? Insiders say it is highly unlikely that BlackBerry customers would automatically lose their service. The judge could possibly issue a 30-day grace period for RIM, giving the company time to come up with another solution.
Regardless of Friday's outcome, government BlackBerry users and emergency workers such as police, firefighters and hospital personnel who rely on the system will not have their BlackBerry service interrupted.
But the court battle has brought the usually drab issue of patent law to the forefront.
Industry analysts say NTP's lawsuit is a classic example of patent trolling. That happens when an individual or company holds a patent with no intention of marketing an idea or making a product. Instead it waits for another company to do that, then claims patent infringement.
In some cases weak but still valid patents are bought at bargain-basement prices, then turned in for a profit.
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