Friday, March 03, 2006
Your Blackberry is safe
Research in Motion, the maker of the Blackberry wireless email device, has settled the lawsuit that putatively threatened its business for $612 million, somewhat more than the $450 million it had reserved based upon the broken settlement last summer. Your and -- more importantly -- my Blackberry is safe.
Of course, longstanding readers of TigerHawk have known for five months that there really was never anything to worry about.
UPDATE: I did not have time to offer any analysis last night other than to link to my earlier post on the subject. That post argued that the plaintiff had no incentive to enforce an injunction because to do wo would damage the capacity of the defendant to pay it money. Since the plaintiff's threat was not credible in a rational world, the plaintiff had to persuade RIMM that it would go to the brink in any case.
The gambit "worked" for the plaintiff in the sense that it got $162 million more than it had walked away from last summer. However, the final settlement was far short of the $1,000,000,000-plus numbers that have been bandied about in the press.
Canadian blogger Mark Evans, who seems to be "all Blackberry, all the time", has a detailed discussion of the facts around the settlement.
Of course, longstanding readers of TigerHawk have known for five months that there really was never anything to worry about.
UPDATE: I did not have time to offer any analysis last night other than to link to my earlier post on the subject. That post argued that the plaintiff had no incentive to enforce an injunction because to do wo would damage the capacity of the defendant to pay it money. Since the plaintiff's threat was not credible in a rational world, the plaintiff had to persuade RIMM that it would go to the brink in any case.
The gambit "worked" for the plaintiff in the sense that it got $162 million more than it had walked away from last summer. However, the final settlement was far short of the $1,000,000,000-plus numbers that have been bandied about in the press.
Canadian blogger Mark Evans, who seems to be "all Blackberry, all the time", has a detailed discussion of the facts around the settlement.
1 Comments:
By 
geoffrobinson, at
Fri Mar 03, 09:06:00 PM:
I know I'm a nerd. But software patents are out of control. Patents are being given out for relatively trivial things. This will hurt our overall economy and innovation.
