2007 seems to be a good year for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) after they won their second court case in as many weeks.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) won a second victory in a key UK patent lawsuit on Wednesday that had threatened the future of BlackBerry’s e-mail service in Britain.London’s Court of Appeal backed a High Court ruling from a year ago that RIM, based in Ontario, Canada, had not infringed a patent held by Luxembourg company InPro Licensing Sarl which related to how portable computers surf the Internet.
Lord Justice Jacob ruled that intellectual property licensor InPro’s patent was not valid and should be revoked, bringing an end to the potential threat to the BlackBerry e-mail service used by hundreds of thousands in Britain.
The court ruled that BlackBerry devices were more than just the ideas that were the subject of InPro’s claim, noting that they “owed nothing to the patent” and must have involved “a vast amount of actual detailed implementation and design”.
