COPYCENSE

“The prospect of a wide-scale shutdown of the BlackBerry mobile e-mail service is closer to becoming reality, as the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request to review a major patent infringement ruling against BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion.

“In 2004, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the only federal appeals court in the country for patent cases, rejected RIM’s argument that it was not infringing on NTP’s patents because a critical piece of the BlackBerry service was located in Canada and not in the United States.

“RIM then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case and filed an emergency request asking to stay the lower court’s decision until the high court decided whether to hear the case. But RIM lost that fight in October when its request was rejected by the court.”

Marguerite Reardon. U.S. Supreme Court Rejects RIM’s Appeal. News.com. Jan. 23, 2006.

See also:

Toni Locy. High Court Won’t Hear BlackBerry Appeal. SiliconValley.com. Jan. 23, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.