In my research in Motion was involved on several Patent Litigation with the different competitors.

On 1999 Glenayre Technologies (formerly known as Glenayre Electonics) filed a patent infringement suit against RIM claiming that the Inter@ctive pager line used Glenayres power-generation from dual battery process. This litigation caused a delay on RIMs contract renewal with the BellSouth company and also their quarterly earnings report came with lower than expected results. In order to get new customers RIM signed an agreement with Dell Computer and Dell started selling Blackberry to large corporate accounts. On 2001 RIM replied back to Glenayre filing a suit against them for infringing on RIMs Single Mailbox Integration patent. Research in Motion won this patent and allowed them to collect royalties from other mobile device makers that were planning on utilizing this technology. On 2002 Research in Motion filed the first of four suits against Good Technology for misappropriation of trade secrets, this dispute continued until 2004 where they settled an agreement. Good Technology agreed to pay a sum of money and quarterly licensing fees. Another legal dispute was the patent for the keyboard design against Handspring for its Treo device but the dispute ended with Handspring agreeing to license RIMs patent. One of their biggest patent infringement litigation was against the company NTP which tried to send a notice to a number of companies and tried to license the wireless email patent to them. None of the companies agreed to take the license. After this they brought a lawsuit against RIM in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia one of the most efficient court districts with patent cases. Research in Motion tried to show the SAM (System for Automated Messages) to demonstrate that they were the pioneers on with this technology because was supposedly released before the NTP invention was created. NPT

attorneys discovered that the SAM version they were showing was not the vintage version of it was an updated version which was released after NTPs invention. This case was so big that almost cause a shutdown to Blackberry systems on the US. In March 2005 both companies tried to reach an agreement that will make RIM to pay $450 million dollars, the negotiations broke down due to other issues. The US Department of Defense filed a brief to allow RIMs service to be allowed on the US due to the large number of users on the United States Federal Government. Later on 2006 they finally agreed to a settlement and RIM agreed to pay a sum of $612 million USD. On July 2003, while still involved on the NTP and Good Technology lawsuits, they also filed a suit against Xerox filed as a response to some patent discussions made by Xerox that could have affected RIM. Almost two months after the agreement settled with NTP, Visto sued RIM for infringement of four patents. And recently on January 2010 Motorola requested to ban all of the Blackberry phones from being imported into the US and filed a lawsuit claiming that they have infringed on multiple patent. RIM already won a case to Motorola on the UK but they are still fighting with Motorola about this in the US. This case totally applied to the TCO because RIM is an example of a company that has been fighting to maintain its patents. They have earned the name Lawsuit in Motion due to their constant lawsuits with their competitors. The company gives us an example of what a patent is and the consequences of not doing the things right with licenses and patents. Is a good example of a company trying to protect their innovation through patents and trade secrets?

References Wikipedia (2010) Research in Motion History/Patent Litigation. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_in_motion George A. Chidi Jr (2001), Computerworld RIM wins patent for BlackBerry single mailbox system. Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/36556/rim_wins_patent_blackberry_single_mailbo x_system/ David P. Bianco, Answer.com Company History: Research in Motion Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/topic/research-in-motion-ltd-usa Wikipedia (2010) NTP inc RIM patent infringement litigation. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP,_Inc.#RIM_patent_infringement_litigation Simon Sage (2010) intomobile RIM wins patent case versus Motorola in UK. Retrieved from http://www.intomobile.com/2010/02/04/rim-wins-patent-case-versus-motorola-in-uk.html Tony Smith (2003) The Register Lawsuits in motion files suit against Xerox http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/29/lawsuits_in_motion_files_suit/