Judge weighs injunction in BlackBerry case

updated 4:03 p.m. ET Feb. 20, 2006

RICHMOND, Va. - Say what you want about patent infringement suits, but at least the BlackBerry case has drama.

A federal judge, clearly impatient with the long-running case, could issue an injunction soon on U.S. sales and service of the wireless e-mail device.

Most patent suits are dismissed or settled long before they reach this stage. Remarkably, neither BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. nor tiny patent holder NTP Inc. have shown signs of backing down. In effect, they’re daring each other to blink first and settle.

Governments, businesses and individual users are growing unnerved by the standoff. Although the odds of an actual shutdown are low, conflicting opinions about the possible outcomes and the spin from both sides have created a confusing picture.

James R. Spencer, a no-nonsense U.S. district judge widely respected in the legal community, now finds himself in the unusual position of weighing an injunction against RIM even as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is expected to finally rescind NTP’s patents.

“These patents are ... guaranteed to go in the garbage,” James Balsillie, co-chief executive of Canada’s RIM, said in December. “At the end of the day, our position is real simple: Let the system work.”

Unfortunately for Balsillie, the system doesn’t necessarily work in a timely fashion. Spencer has signaled that he is unwilling to delay his proceedings while awaiting final word from the patent office, which lags far behind the court system. A case that could change the practice of granting injunctions in patent cases, eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, will be taken up by the Supreme Court, but no decision is expected until the spring at the earliest. Spencer, meanwhile, has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 24 on the injunction and damages.

Because patent infringement cases don’t often rise to this level of importance and even fewer make it this far in the courts, it’s hard to tell how Spencer will rule. An injunction he once issued on a sediment-control device, for instance, interested few people outside the construction industry. RIM v. NTP, on the other hand, could affect many of the more than 3 million BlackBerry users in the United States.

“His bottom line is that he wants this case off his docket,” said Susan Dadio, a patent attorney in Alexandria, Va. “And if the two sides can’t reach a settlement or resolve this, he will not be afraid to act himself.”

Arlington, Va.-based NTP was co-founded by the late Thomas Campana Jr., an engineer who in 1990 created a system to send e-mails between computers and wireless devices. He is survived by his wife, who owns a large stake in NTP.

The BlackBerry hit the market in the late 1990s, becoming popular with lawyers, consultants and others who wanted to check e-mails away from their office and home computers.

In 2001, NTP filed suit. A year later, a federal jury in Richmond agreed that RIM had infringed on NTP’s patents. The jury awarded the small firm 5.7 percent of U.S. BlackBerry sales, a rate that Spencer later increased to 8.55 percent.

Spencer issued an injunction in 2003 but held off on its enforcement during RIM’s appeals. Those efforts largely failed and the case returned to his court last year.

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