By Tony Smith for The
Register
This article has been reproduced from The Register, with
permission.
"It's a software upgrade that we're very, very comfortable with
and... we're just finishing testing," RIM Joint-CEO Jim Balsillie
told investors at a conference in New York yesterday.
The upgrade programme was announced in June as a way of ridding
RIM's software of code that infringes the patents held by NTP and
over the use of which it was successfully sued in 2003.
Since then RIM has lost an appeal against that judgment, come to
terms with NTP, fallen out with NTP, seen most of NTP's releveant
patents ruled void by the US Patent Office, had its request to
appeal to a higher court rejected by the Supreme Court, and found
itself on the verge of going back to the US District Court for
Eastern Virginia to face the prospect of a fresh injunction against
its infringing products.
Last week, US District Court Judge James Spencer said: "I intend
to move swiftly... I've spent enough of my life and time on NTP and
RIM."
RIM probably feels the same way. The update, if it can be
clearly shown to side-step NTP's patented techniques, should help,
not only by avoiding a possible injunction but perhaps even goading
NTP into settling the case out of court once and for all.
© The Register
2005
