I must say that I've toyed with it, the convenience and multi-purpose aspects are great. Plus, the ability to surreptiously check your email while you're in a meeting...Well, the Washington Post reports that there is a possibility that patent litigation in Northern Virginia could result in an injunction shutting down BlackBerry. There are 3.65 million U.S. customers (it sure felt to me like there were more, but maybe I just operate in BlackBerry intensive circles). The article also says there is an exemption for government employees -- that's interesting, the government will continue to support a product that is violating the law?
Perhaps even more interesting is an accompanying Washington Post article by Steven Pearlstein discussing the legal history of this case, and how it has ended up in this sad spot. To quote: "By pursuing a scorched-earth legal strategy, RIM has spent more in
legal fees -- Stout estimates them at between $25 and $50 million --
than it would have cost to license NTP's technology in the first place.
The price of settlement has now grown to at least $500 million, which
Stout would split with his lawyers and Campana's widow." Unfortunately, that's now all a sunk cost. Pearlstein concludes: "What these cases are about is legal thuggery -- big companies, with
their endless motions and discovery and appeals, abusing the legal
system no less than the plaintiffs' attorneys they always complain
about. The only way to end these wars of legal attrition is for courts
to issue business-threatening injunctions that force the parties to the
settlement table." UpWord has more background on the specific legal issues at play here.
