SHAREPRICE/ECONOMIC EFFECT OF PATENT SUIT

SHAREPRICE/ECONOMIC EFFECT OF PATENT SUIT

The Motley Fool has a summary article about the resulting economic impact of the patent infringement battle that Research in Motion (RIM - seller of the popular Blackberry) is currently engaged in with NTP.  In a nutshell, RIM lost a patent infringement lawsuit to NTP over 5 of NTP's patents - resulting in an injunction of future Blackberry sales, a royalty of 8.5% paid by RIM to NTP, and past damages.  RIM has appealed and, according to The Motley Fool, the decision has not impacted investors confidence in RIMM's ability to prevail at the appellate level.

The PTO has initiated a reexamination process of NTP's patents as well, an action similar to the one undertaken by the PTO with respect to Eolas browser plugin patent that has bedeviled Microsoft. 

Interesting statistic: if RIM has set aside $59 million in anticipate of the 8.5% royalty, this would translate to sales of almost $700 million.  That is a lot of little boxes on executive's belts!

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<date name="when" value="Thu, 11 Mar 2004 04:11:22 GMT