“A northern California jury directed Research in Motion Ltd to pay $147.2 million in patent litigation over a remote management system for wireless devices, according to an attorney for the plaintiff, Mformation Technologies Inc.,” Dan Levine reports for Reuters.
“The verdict on Friday in a San Francisco federal court comes at a bad time for RIM, whose stock has fallen more than 70 percent in the past year as customers abandon the BlackBerry in favor of Apple’s iPhone,” Levine reports. “Amar Thakur, an attorney for Mformation, said the jury directed RIM to pay an $8 royalty for every BlackBerry device connected to RIM’s enterprise server software, which brings the total award to $147.2 million. The verdict only covers U.S. sales through trial, Thakur said, and not future or foreign damages.”
Levine reports, “Based in Waterloo, Ontario, RIM last month posted its first operating loss in eight years, and it was much deeper than expected. The company also said it was cutting 5,000 jobs, almost a third of its workforce…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Merciful acceleration of the RIM zombie’s trip to the dustbin of history.
For a company that needs every penny it has this verdict has got to sting! Expect this quarters loss to be even worse.
Better collect that judgment soon, while RIM still has a few bucks coming in.
No way this judgement will ever get paid. RIM can tie this up in appeals long past the time when the company has any assets left.
At that point, there will be zero devices connected through BES, and they won’t be infringing on the patent anyway.
But a $147M legal liability certainly impacts the prospects of a buyout. This is very bad news for RIM.
Hardly material. Any serious buyers have already made up their mind. Anyone interested in the company before it goes into liquidation is already facing much larger costs than this as far as what to do with RIMs employees and pentions.
Just another victim of the broken patent system
YaGottaBeKiddingMe. A victim of a broken patent system? ROFL, Not even close. A victim of feckless management, zero ideas, and absolutely no innovation. This is the result of lack of vision at the top.
No they are victims. The patent was filed and granted long after they created their enterprise management system.
Its another case of someone getting a patent for something already “invented”
I will agree the management should have patented it for RIM so I’m in partial agreement with you 🙂
Did RIM do anything after this patent was filed/ granted differently than before which would expose them or did they literally get hit with a judgment because this patented what RIM was already doing after the fact?
Did RIM do anything after this patent was filed/ granted differently than before which would expose them or did they literaflly get hit with a judgment because this patented what RIM was already doing after the fact?
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/13560423/rip-rim
Nothing else….