Research in Motion Ltd

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) is a company known primarily for its BlackBerry devices and e-mail services. Throughout the early years of its career, RIM has faced many patent infringement suits regarding their wireless devices but one of them that lasted from 2001-2006 stands out among the herd. This specific case was the one between NTP (New Technologies Products) owner Mr. Campana and RIM's owner Mr. Lazaridis over wireless e-mail patents. This ongoing battle between companies could have ended as soon as it began, but RIM's actions dug them into a financial hole and put their customers in a state of panic.

Research in Motion was founded in 1984 in Waterloo, Ontario by Mike Lazaridis who always had a passion for inventing (International Directory of Company Histories). Lazaridis from the early age of 8 gravitated toward technology constructing a pendulum clock out of Legos and in high school, built a working computer (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). Even in college he was focused and seemed mature for his years. He eventually dropped out of college, however, and started RIM with the backing of friends and family. Their first contract came from General Motors of Canada and for years after that moved from contract to contract. In the early 90's, RIM became interested in digital wireless devices when Rogers Cantel Mobile Communications Inc, a paging and cellular telephone operator, contracted with them (International Directory of Company Histories). From this point on, RIM started developing software and pagers that involved wireless networks, and in 1999, it introduced its BlackBerry for corporate e-mail solutions. This Blackberry featured a push system for email delivery where e-mail messages were sent from the user's personal computer to the Blackberry without dialing in (International Directory of Company Histories). From 2000 upwards, its revenue skyrocketed and it continued to expand. In comparison, Mr. Campana, founder of NTP, was also an avid technological whiz kid who became interested in computers because of his father. Campana joined the military and then after, worked at Argonne National Laboratory (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). In his part time, he started his own company called Electronic Services Associates which struggled in the beginning. In the early 1980's, he developed a paging system and took out 50 patents (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). In 1992, he hooked up with a man named Mr. Stout, a lawyer who used to work as an examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). They both created NTP which was not a store and did not sell anything but it did set out to protect all of their patents and ideas which lay dormant.

Thus, begins the NTP versus RIM saga which began when Campana warned several companies by formal letter that they were infringing on wireless e-mail patents. RIM was among these companies, and the letter "politely invited recipients to negotiate licensing rights with NTP Inc.," (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). At this point, NTP did not have a specific company targeted and did not file lawsuits, so NTP did not have anything to work with. NTP apparently stated that RIM ignored the letter. However, RIM stated that they told NTP that they did an internal review and found that they had not infringed on their patents. RIM could not prove that they acknowledged any inquiry sent by NTP. Then, in November of 2001, NTP filed an infringement case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). RIM's response stated that their claims were "unsubstantiated" and regarded NTP as a "vile troll-a company with dormant patents that preys on successful technology companies to extort fees from hot-selling products" (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). RIM never took NTP seriously convinced that their patents were "junk" and that all technology they claimed to have patented was already in use by other companies. RIM constantly put down Campana, and he was hurt by the fact that they were underestimating him. Campana decided that if RIM didn't cooperate, he would shut them down. RIM dragged on this lawsuit and acted in a manner that was dishonest. RIM had to prove in court that the technology existed before 1991 which was when Campana filed his patents. To prove this, RIM brought in a witness named David Keeney who with his company called Tech Now used SAM (System for Automated Messages) in 1987 to send text messages (Mckenna, Waldie, & Avery). He successfully demonstrated in court that the SAM was able to send a text message to a pager. Unfortunately, NTP's lawyer noticed a discrepancy in the hardware and it seemed that new hardware was switched out from the old version. Once this deception was caught, the court raised damages to $53 million plus about $4.5 million in legal fees (Mckenna, Waldie,