Calm down. Please see this link
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/sto...d=122000I8R7VI. Most of your links were pre court specualtion.
From Mobile Tech Today
Judge Grants Reprieve to BlackBerry Maker
February 24, 2006 2:30PM
RIM chief executive James Balsillie told CNBC television after the hearing that settlement talks will continue but that a favorable decision from the patent office has changed the landscape."These patents are going away," he said.
The maker of the BlackBerry wireless device, Research In Motion, averted a potentially catastrophic court-ordered U.S. shutdown Friday when a judge declined to issue an injunction in a long-running patent case.
Judge James Spencer took no action in the hearing but urged Canadian-based RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, and patent-holding firm NTP to settle their dispute, company officials said after the hearing.
NTP argued for an immediate injunction and payment of $126 million in damages. RIM, citing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's recent rejection of some NTP patents, urged the judge to stay his hand.
"We are grateful to the court for its time and look forward to a final outcome," NTP said in a statement.
"We presented a very strong case and believe, based on the closing remarks of Judge Spencer, that the court was receptive to the merits of our arguments."
RIM chief executive James Balsillie told CNBC television after the hearing that settlement talks will continue but that a favorable decision from the patent office has changed the landscape.
"These patents are going away," he said. "NTP is not bargaining with a fair patent peace proposal and we have a 'workaround' to ensure that our service is going to keep up and running."
The hearing took place in U.S. District Court in Richmond, Virginia.
"This buys RIM some time," said Rod Thompson, a patent attorney for the San Francisco firm Farella Braun and Martell. "The judge is telling both sides, 'Don't make me do this,'" added Thompson.
In 2002, a federal court found that RIM's BlackBerry technology violated patents held by NTP. Research In Motion has repeatedly appealed the original decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to no avail.
But parallel proceedings in the U.S. Patent Office have been going better for the Canadian firm, which has over three million U.S. users and gets a majority of its revenues from U.S. operations.
Just ahead of the court hearing, RIM said it had received word that all three remaining patents had been rejected, based in part on information not considered in the 2002 trial.
"With these rejections, the outcome of the case must be tipping in favor of RIM and against the likelihood of the shutdown," said Sarah Burnett, senior research analyst with London-based Butler Group.
Info-Tech Research Group analyst Carmi Levy said the future of mobile communications is at stake in the case, and argued that the case was based on what he called "patent trolls."
"An injunction would give free reign to patent trolls -- those companies that use the patent system as the exclusive basis for suing other firms over disputed technology," Levy said.
"We are in danger of devolving into an era where technology companies expend their energy on legal battles rather than innovation."
Alternatively, if Judge Spencer ends up ruling in RIM's favor, Levy says that such a ruling would take the brakes off of wireless adoption for those companies that have been waiting on the sidelines for this case to end.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
© 2006 Mobile Tech Today. All rights reserved