Forrester Research telecom analyst Ellen Daley thinks theres about a 60 percent chance an injunction will be issued. Even if that is true in my opinion there is a 0 percent chance that BlackBerry gets shut down. In fact, I would be willing bet all the loose change that you could find in the various sofas, love seats, and recliner chairs in my house that your BlackBerry service won’t miss a beat.
Lets look at the worse case scenario for Research in Motion. An injunction is imposed today, the last four NTP patents are upheld on final review, and NTP wins their appeal (which we are sure they will soon file) on the first patent that was ruled invalid on final review Wednesday. All that RIM would have to do to make all this go away is the same thing that could have done years ago to make this go away. Pay NTP some incredibly large sum of money to settle.
A BlackBerry shutdown benefits no one. All NTP wants is to get paid and they know that in order for them to get paid, Research in Motion must continue to get paid. If RIM gets shutdown, NTP doesn’t get a check in the mail every quarter so they are just as much against an actual shutdown as RIM is.
I feel NTP are not in it for the money, since the main man died, the other one swore that he would do whatever he could try to hurt RIM. Almost like in the movies where they swear to avenge their partners death.
The demands NTP are currently making are difficult for anybody to run a viable and progress service along side. But RIM have the rumoured work around, so any notice given by the courts , may just be side stepped and nobody notices the difference.
I see where you are coming from Steve but I am sure that if a Research in Motion accountant showed up at the NTP offices in Virginia with a check that has the proper amount of zeros on it, all of this could go away very quickly.