[MarkF]

I didn't see this posted anywhere but part of the proposed workaround that RIM talking about only works for handhelds at v4.0 or higher....

[northgull]

All this brinkmanship by RIM strikes me as cutting off one's nose to spite your face. Have you all seen this statement by a co-founder of NTP today?

UPDATE 2-NTP co-founder says no talks with RIM since June
Wed Dec 7, 2005 04:05 PM ET
(Adds details. In U.S. dollars)
By Jeffrey Hodgson
TORONTO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (RIMM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) has not talked with NTP Inc. since June about settling a patent infringement suit that could shut down RIM's U.S. service, NTP co-founder Don Stout said on Wednesday.
Stout, who is also a patent lawyer, said there is no sign that settlement talks will resume soon. He pledged to continue to pursue a court injunction that would shut down the popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service in the United States.
"There's nothing to indicate that they have any inclination to settle the case that I'm aware of," he told Reuters in an interview.
"RIM's got to come up and settle the case in terms that are acceptable to us if they want to avoid an injunction."
Contacted earlier on Wednesday, a RIM spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the last time the Waterloo, Ontario-based company had spoken with NTP.
NTP successfully sued RIM for patent infringement in 2002. It won an injunction the following year to halt U.S. sales of the device and service. The injunction was stayed pending the appeal process, which has largely been exhausted.
RIM and NTP announced a $450 million settlement in March but the deal fell apart in June.
RIM was pushed closer to a possible U.S. shutdown after U.S. District Judge James Spencer ruled on Nov. 30 that there was no "valid and enforceable" settlement agreement. He also denied RIM's request to stay proceedings pending the completion of a review of NTP's patents by the U.S. patent office.
"I do expect the case to move ahead very quickly right now ... as they say in athletic parlance, the ball is in their court," Stout said.
COULD HAVE SETTLED FOR $50 MLN
Stout said NTP has indicated it would settle the case for a royalty rate of 5.7 percent over the life of the patents, but RIM's growth projections made it difficult to come up with an exact number.
"If you apply that growth over the life of the patents it's a more significant number than the $450 million figure, but I can't put a number on it. The first thing is you'd have to have discussions with them, and, as I say, there's no discussions with these people at all," he said.
Stout said RIM could have settled the case for as little as $50 million a couple of years ago, though there was no specific NTP offer on the table.
NTP has already licensed its patents to RIM rivals including Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research) and closely held Good Technology. Stout said a licensing deal with a third firm is likely to happen soon and a fourth is on the table.
"There's a number of people who are looking at the circumstances and saying 'well gee, if RIM's not around, this looks like an opportune time to get into this space'," he said.
In a report dated Dec. 5, U.S. technology consulting firm Gartner Inc. advised clients to put "mission-critical" BlackBerry deployments on hold until RIM's position in its legal battle is clarified. It also said they should consider alternative offerings.
The Gartner recommendation helped knock RIM's stock to a five-week low on Wednesday.
RIM's stock fell 35 cents to close at $61.60 on Nasdaq on volume of more than 5.4 million. The stock at one point touched $59.74, its lowest level since Oct. 27.
In Toronto, RIM fell 80 Canadian cents to close at C$71.30.
($1=$1.16 Canadian)

[nb_mitch]

Since the "founder" died last year, this "co-founder" is merely the attorney who has everything to gain, what would you expect him to say? I doubt the $50M settlement was ever on the table, ever, but his is merely spinning his side of the story.

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by Mark Rejhon

Excellent post.

As much as I hate to, I totally agree with this Good_Guy post here.

WHOA! The sun is rising in the West!

[Good_Guy]

NTP has said before the presented a licensing agreement to RIMM back before the case started. No details were ever released before, though. That being said, 5.7% creates a pretty big number. $540 million in revenue last quarter. That works out to about $31 million. I haven't looked at their other earnings numbers and done the math, but they spent $6 million on legal fees last quarter as well.

[Jase88]

Hopefully this case goes to the Supreme Court. I can't stand the thought of bloodsuckers like NTP stiffling innovation.

[rlibson]

The legal argument aside, how long will rim allow this wound to fester. The media/ investment industry is questioning the management of the company not per se the legal status of the case. Sure NTP may be asking for twice the licensing revenue, but why suffer the continued PR nightmare. The decrease in market cap; combined with the slowed sales and hit to brand equity is real. I think rim needs to needs to take a que from the investment industry and to quote Kenny Rogers... "no when to foldem." They were smart enough to know that paying billions to Spitzer was going to be cheaper in the long run than weathering the bad publicity of a public legal battle and the possible loss of "trust" of the customer. The market value of "consumer trust" is something that can't be put down on a balance sheet or easily valued...unfortunately I believe that rim is not considering this when they run the numbers and decide to continue this costly court battle.

[tgray]

Originally Posted by Mark Rejhon

"network shutdown", guaranteed to be minimum 30 day advance notice; it will not happen suddenly. NTP says they will give 30 days, government asks for 90 days advance notice. (See the links in my original post for references for where I get these numbers).

I'm having difficulty finding a quote where we will have 30 days minimum notice before service is disabled. Could you point me in the right direction?

I don't think BlackBerry will go down either, but I still need to come up with a detailed contingency plan. I cannot tell my bosses we will have 30 days if I don't see that published from a reliable source.

Mark, you will always be a reliable souce in my book!!!!

[sailorlena]

If RIM shuts down, voice on the device should still work as it's carrier based, but will SMS still work? Or Pin-to-Pin?

[sailorlena]

Can we use the desktop redirector? Is this part of the law suit? I'm just trying to look for a solution without having my users purchase new devices........Thanks.

[goaliemn]

Originally Posted by sailorlena

Can we use the desktop redirector? Is this part of the law suit? I'm just trying to look for a solution without having my users purchase new devices........Thanks.

Just hang on. I don't think there will be an outage at all.

[sailorlena]

My opinion is that nothing will happen, but like many others that have posted, we are asked by upper management to come up with a contingency plan........All this work I'm doing will probably be over NOTHING :( Thanks.

[jibi]

Isn't this case based on the fact that they have major operations here and not the fact that their main customers are based here. Why not just move all operations to the North and out of the States? There would be no jurisdiction for our judicial system, imo.

[goaliemn]

Originally Posted by jibi

Isn't this case based on the fact that they have major operations here and not the fact that their main customers are based here. Why not just move all operations to the North and out of the States? There would be no jurisdiction for our judicial system, imo.

They have nothing in the US. Absolutely nothing. They have resellers here (T-mobile, etc), but no RIM equipment is on US soil.

This is part of the problem with the case, if you ask me. The carriers are providing the data connectivity, but not the actual RIM service.

[Good_Guy]

Well, technically, they have operations here. Their "Global Department of Licensing and Standards" office is located in Texas. Now, I would assume that none of the actual network goes through there, though.

[jibi]

From NTP's standpoint, the operations extends from point A to point B with the latter being an end user. We could all just move to Canada. I hear Vancouver is nice.

[goodguyman]

Originally Posted by sailorlena

My opinion is that nothing will happen, but like many others that have posted, we are asked by upper management to come up with a contingency plan........All this work I'm doing will probably be over NOTHING :( Thanks.

Hey Sailorlena,

I"ve got a perfect contingency plan for you; GoodLink Now Before you start flaming me...think about it for a minute...

1. the infrastructure requirments for both solutions are almost identical..in fact you could probably just disable whatever BES services are running then install GoodLink on the same machine...

2. No firewall changes required - we run on 443 or 3101

3. Your companies carrier would stay the same (we work on all of them

See that wasnt so bad...i think the hardest part will be deciding which device to replace your Blackberry with

[Berry One]

i think the hardest part will be deciding which device to replace your Blackberry with

Sad truth. All other hardware is years behind blackberry. People buy RIM solution not that much for BES or what ports you have to open in firewall, but for devices.

GoodLink can copy RIM on software side as much as they want and can, but it takes much more to design good hardware.

Go with GoodLink, depend on 'Made in Who Known Where Don't Know How' mobile devices.

Say, I want to give executives International 4-band devices, managers to use CDMA, our 10,000 assembly and warehouse workers to have WiFi devices (so that we can save $7 million annually on fees to wireless carriers and give every worker true office mobile device)- and we want same style, same look and same software on all of them. Easier to support.

Oh, yes- and server-side software must support all of them, too.

[Jase88]

Vista/NTP just went after Microsoft for push email. What makes you think Goodlink is litigation proof from NTP?

Originally Posted by goodguyman

I"ve got a perfect contingency plan for you; GoodLink Now Before you start flaming me...think about it for a minute...

[merlinw]

Well; I guess we are all safe until Feb. 1st at the soonest.
...............................
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. judge overseeing the patent infringement case against the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device on Friday ordered both sides to file final legal briefs by February 1 as he considers a request for damages and an injunction against the company.

U.S. District Judge James Spencer set filing deadlines for both Research In Motion Ltd. and the plaintiff in the case, patent holding company NTP Inc., but indicated he would not schedule a hearing until next month.