Judge Rules Yet Again Against RIM

A federal judge has just ruled that the settlement Research in Motion (RIM) and NTP reached earlier this year is invalid.

The two companies have been involved in a patent infringement lawsuit since 2001. During this, judges have ruled against RIM multiple times.

Last spring, RIM agreed to pay $450 million to license the NTP patents that are at the heart of the case, but the agreement fell apart this summer over exact interpretations of the details.

With today's ruling, it's possible that RIM will have to pay a substantially higher licensing fee.

Hanging over its head is an earlier injunction from a district court that would bar RIM from offering the BlackBerry email service to all non-governmental users in the United States.

This injunction won't go into effect until after RIM had had a chance to appeal the decision, but the company has already nearly exhausted the appeals process. The federal judge has said that he'll look into lifting it in the near future.

After today's ruling, trading of RIM's stock has been temporarily halted.

While all this is going on, the U.S. Patent Office is re-examining whether the NTP patents are valid. The judge in the case, however, does not appear to be taking this into consideration.

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