From December 1st, 2005 BlackberryCool.com
With the news of Judge Spencer refusal to enforce the previous disputed patent deal, the media has sensationalized the event with headlines of doom and gloom for RIM. The New York Daily News writes "Blackberry may get axe on E-mail" and it’s even worst on the Blogosphere with less informed people exagerating the event. All this news tells us is that NTP is in for a larger pay day then the previous expected $450 million once agreed upon but later dissolved after the parties couldn’t agree on the terms.
Both RIM and NTP have reasons why there shouldn’t be a shutdown of Blackberry services in the US. First of all, NTP is a patent holding company, they have no actual real life competing product. Palm would probably have the most to gained with a Blackberry injunction, and others agree seeing how the stock rosed 5.3 percent on the news. NTP also doesn’t want to make any enemies with the Federal Government which heavily rely on Blackberrys. It was only after The U.S. Department of Justice waded into the patent case that NTP agreed that any shutdown of the BlackBerry will not affect government customers or emergency response personnel.
RIM has also made public that they have a working work-around that bypasses all the NTP patents. So if the Blackberry services gets shutdown, and that’s a big if, they have a strategy. However any work around would be closely examined by NTP and it would probably instigate another patent dispute case which none of them want. Our prediction is that RIM and NTP will settle for a huge amount, possibly in the 1 billion range so that both parties can move on from the case that has latest for 5 years.
