Blackberry Appeal Denied

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal of the patent infringement ruling against the developers of the Blackberry today.

What does this mean to the estimated 3 million Blackberry users in the US? It's hard to say at this point... technicaly the judge could order Blackberry services to be shut down in the US, but they are still seeking other solutions to this issue.

One of the arguments is that the Blackberry transmissions are relayed from Canada, the headquarters of Blackberry's developer Research in Motion (RIM). They argue that a section of the U.S. Patent Act bars unauthorized use of a patented invention "within the United States", and that they are transmitting from Canada, not the U.S.

RIM is also seeking help from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which is reconsidering the NTP patents (the company that filed the patent infringement suit). Preliminary comments from the U.S. Patent office state that the NTP patents don't contain new inventions and should therefore be canceled.

RIM has stated that it has developed some sort of "workaround" in case they do not succeed in court.

Personally, I'm not a Blackberry user, opting instead for the Treo 650 mostly because of it's easy interface with programs that I normally use in my business. However, people that I go to for real estate support services use the Blackberry's heavily, from lenders to title reps to escrow officers and many others who affect the flow of paperwork in any real estate transaction. So if the Blackberry's use in the U.S. was banned, it would affect me greatly even though I don't use their devices. The Blackberry devices are also used quite a bit by U.S. law enforcement personnel, so this could end up being a personal safety issue as well.

Should Blackberry be denied the use of their product in the U.S. because of a prior patent by another company that has never developed products to go along with this patent? Hopefully the U.S. Patent Office will find a way to allow the Blackberry products to remain in use in the U.S.

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Linda Slocum
HoneyStartPacking.com

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