Supreme Court Denies Request for Review of BlackBerry Ruling

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Supreme Court Denies Request for Review of BlackBerry Ruling

5:05 am on January 24, 2006 | Category: Business, Mobile Devices, Law

The US Supreme Court rejected a review request from RIM yesterday, over a patent infringement lawsuit that has threatened to shut down the BlackBerry wireless email service in the American market.

If accepted, the request would have triggered a review of the federal appeals court ruling, on the side of patent holding company, NTP Inc.

NTP claims that the court rejection has “closed the final path for RIM to avoid liability,” over the patent infringement case, which has now threatened the BlackBerry maker for over three years.

RIM, however, downplayed the impact of this court decision, claiming that it has “no bearing on the merits of the outstanding issues.”

“RIM has consistently acknowledged that Supreme Court review is granted in only a small percentage of cases and we were not banking on Supreme Court review,” said the company’s vice president of corporate marketing, Mark Guibert.

FTN Midwest Securities analyst, Ben Bollin says that the rejection of this court appeal comes as no great surprise, and probably won’t make any difference in the long term results of the case.