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No.814
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No.35590
In 1999, Canadian company, Research in Motion (RIM), launched the
BlackBerry Pager.5 The pager was an instant commercial success with businesspeople,
celebrities, and politicians. Behind the BlackBerry’s fame was its wireless
email technology. No longer were emails confined to the desktop but were now
easily accessible on-the-go. The founder of RIM, Mike Lazaridis, invented the
technology for the BlackBerry’s email function in the 1990s – or so he thought. In
2002, a company called NTP alleged that the BlackBerry infringed patents on
wireless email technology that an engineer, Thomas Campana, had invented in
the 1980s.6 The litigation came as a shock to RIM. Based in Virginia, NTP was an
obscure two-person company that did not manufacture or sell any products.
Meanwhile, RIM had received its own patent on the BlackBerry’s email
technology.7 As far as it was concerned, RIM had created the technology and had
the patent to prove it! Yet NTP won its infringement case and secured an injunction
that threatened to bring the production of BlackBerries to a halt.8 To avoid
a complete shutdown, RIM ultimately paid NTP the hefty licence fee of
$612.5 million in 2006.9