123webguru News Desk

RIM at impasse in NTP settlement, stock falls

By Jeffrey Hodgson

TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. (RIMM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) (RIM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) will take court action against NTP Inc after hitting an impasse in finalizing a patent dispute settlement, reopening a legal battle investors had been told was wrapped up.

RIM, which helped popularize mobile e-mailing with its thumb-operated BlackBerry, said in a statement on Thursday it will ask the court to enforce the settlement terms.

Shares of the Waterloo, Ontario-based firm opened down about 3 percent, or $2.45, at $74.99 on Nasdaq on volume of more than 2 million. In Toronto, the shares fell C$3 to C$94.

"Nobody really seems to know what this means. This is really odd ... for the short term, this will upset and disturb the market," said Duncan Stewart, a partner and portfolio manager with Tera Capital Corp.

The Canadian company agreed in March to pay $450 million to end the long-running patent dispute with closely held NTP, a U.S.-based patent holding company in return for the right to continue its BlackBerry-related business without further interference from NTP or its patents.

At the time, analysts said the settlement was good news for RIM because it removes a major legal overhang, including the risk it could be barred from selling its flagship product in the United States.

The two sides then started negotiating a final license and settlement deal.

"RIM has been negotiating in good faith to complete that process," the company said.

"However, NTP refuses to honor its obligations under the term sheet and finalize the definitive documents. As a result, an impasse has been reached with respect to the settlement."

RIM said it is reviewing any potential accounting implications of the impasse and said it is holding settlement payment until the matter is resolved.

You can also check : Top News News of the Week

NTP successfully sued RIM in 2002 for patent infringement. In December, a U.S. appeals court upheld the patent infringement finding against RIM, but said part of the earlier ruling was flawed and sent the case back to a lower court.

Analysts had said the December decision strengthened NTP's position and put pressure on RIM to settle.

($1=$1.25 Canadian)

(With additional reporting by Sue Thomas in Toronto)

News Source
http://www.microsite.reuters.com

Top News

News of the Week

All News

Website design company

About us  Clients  Partners  Testimonials  Guarantee  Latest web news  Tools  Sitemap  Free price quote  Buy Packages   Portfolios

123webguru Articles The Birth of a Professional Web Site.. The Internet has opened a whole New World of opportunity for all of us. With the vast amount of information available at your fingertips, it has never ... Using videos onto the websites It is found that more and more multimedia contents are being added to the website design in order to make it attractive. The idea is nothing less than ... Hyperlinks and Sitemaps Sitemaps and hyperlinks are important constituents of a website from the view point of Search Engine web spidering. Hyperlinks or Sitemaps helps the web ... What is Blogger.com In the late 1990’s three San Francisco based web developers came up with the idea of being able to share information about anything on the web. ... Disable right click Due to widespread content thieving from website design, webmaster are putting a lot of efforts in order to bring it down. It is found that mostly the visitors ... AboutUs page of the website The "About Us" page is one of the most important page of your entire website design. The reason being that the visitors get to know about the ...

Are you looking for :

Ecommerce website | Real estate website | Database driven website | Web base Application | Full Flash website | Sitemap | Flash application | Logo design | SEO | Website design company | Web programming | Website redesign and redevelopment | Development of new website | Start a new website | Custom website design

123webguru.com, A new web division of Microsec Technologies Ltd.
© 2002-2005 Website design company, All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer | Privacy policy