US court orders RIM to pay $147.2 mn for infringing Mformation's patents

A US court yesterday ordered the maker of Blackberry smartphones Research in Motion (RIM) to pay $147.2 million for infringing Mformation Technologies' patents on remote management system for wireless devices.

The verdict from a San Francisco federal court covering only US sales of RIM, ordered the Waterloo, Ontario-based company to pay $8 as royalty for every BlackBerry device connected to RIM's enterprise server software, taking the total penalty to $147.2 million.

New Jersey-based Mformation, a provider of mobile device management (MDM) technology software, had filed a patent lawsuit against RIM in 2008, alleging that the Canadian company had infringed two of its patents on remote management system for wireless devices.

Mformation had claimed in its lawsuit that it had offered to licence the patents to RIM during licensing discussions, but instead of taking the licence, RIM customised its own software that relied heavily on its patents.

RIM denied that it has copied Mformation's patents and claimed that the processes were already being used even before Mformation filed its patent application.

RIM had argued that Mformation did not suffer from any damages as it took it nearly three years to file the suit although the patent was issued in November 2005.