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A federal jury in San Francisco has found beleaguered Blackberry maker
Research in Motion Ltd. liable for $147.2 million in damages for infringing
on patents held by Mformation Technologies Inc.
Amar Thakur, a lawyer for Mformation, said Saturday that the verdict late
Friday followed a three-week trial and a week of deliberations by an eight-
person jury.
Mformation, of Edison, New Jersey, sued Research in Motion in October 2008,
alleging that Canada-based RIM infringed on its 1999 invention for remotely
managing wireless devices. Mformation's software allows companies to
remotely access employee cell phones to do software upgrades, change
passwords or to wipe data from phones that have been stolen.
Officials at RIM, which has been struggling with plummeting sales, a
declining stock and other problems, did not provide a comment Saturday.
Thakur said the jury ruled that Research in Motion should pay his client $8
for each of the 18.4 million Blackberrys that were connected to the
Blackberry Enterprise Server, from the day the lawsuit was filed until the
time of the trial. That's a total of $147.2 million.
He said the software at issue is the heart of the business of Mformation, a
privately held company with several hundred employees.
"We believe it's been fundamental to the success of Research in Motion,"
Thakur told The Associated Press.
The patent at issue was filed in 2001 and issued in 2005, he said.
RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, has previously denied it did anything wrong.
RIM has seen its business crumble as it increasingly loses market share.
Today's consumers want smartphones that go far beyond handling e-mail and
phone calls, with built-in cameras and other cool functions.
Particularly telling is the plunge in the Blackberry's U.S. market share. It
has dropped from 41% in 2007, the year the first iPhone came out, to below
4% in the first three months of this year, according to research firm IDC.
Meanwhile, RIM will miss a chance to bounce back because of repeated delays
on its BlackBerry 10 operating software, which is intended to help
Blackberrys catch up to rivals such as the iPhone and smartphones running
Google's Android software. Not only will devices with the new Blackberry
software miss the crucial holiday shopping season, they'll have even more
competition when they do go on sale, including a new iPhone expected from
Apple this fall.
Last month, RIM reported weaker than expected results. For the quarter that
ended on June 2, it lost $518 million, or 99 cents a share. Even after
excluding impairment charges, the loss was 37 cents per share. Analysts
polled by FactSet were expecting a 3-cent per share loss. Revenue fell 43%
to $2.8 billion, and RIM said it will be cutting 5,000 jobs, or 30% of its
workforce.
The company's stock, which traded for more than $30 less than a year ago,
has recently dropped below $8, near a nine-year low. On Friday, the stock
dropped another 2.4% to close at $7.24. |
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