RIM reaches agreement with Motorola
Posted Jun 11, 2010 04:32:02 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Research in Motion has reached an out-of-court settlement with Motorola in a patent dispute. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed but, in a release, RIM says it will issue “an up-front payment and ongoing royalties to Motorola.” The dispute dates back to 2007 when the tech giants failed to come to terms on the re-negotiation of an existing pact. Motorola had maintained that RIM was infringing on copyrights in five key areas, including Wi-Fi.
This is not the first patent dispute to dog Waterloo’s BlackBerry-maker. Last month, RIM settled a disagreement with Prism Technologies when the Omaha company accused RIM of misusing its technology. Last year, RIM spent $267.5-million to settle a suit with California-based Visto Corporation. And in 2006, RIM paid a whopping $612.5-million in a patent struggle with NTP in Virginia.
Analysts say this is all in a day’s work for a tech company. The technology is so new and the sector is growing so fast that such disputes are inevitable, according to Nick Agostino of Mackie Research in Toronto. Agostino says RIM is not the only tech company caught up in patent disputes. He cites litigation against the likes of Apple, Nokia, HTC and Motorola as examples. And the markets barely react. Agostino says unless the settlement is greater than expected, investors appear unfazed. RIM’s stock was trading up in the wake of the news earlier today and Agostino says there was little reaction even in the NTP settlement four years ago.
Agostino’s sentiments are echoed by IDC’s Kevin Restivo. Restivo tells 570 News patents are a relatively murky area and the relative youth of the tech sector make such disputes commonplace. Restivo says patent lawsuits are simply a part of doing business in the IT industry and that often means cash payments are to be made and court battles are to be waged.
