Canadian Government Intervenes In BlackBerry Patent Battle

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

24 January 2005

The Canadian government has decided to intervene in a patent dispute between US-based firm NTP Inc., and Canada-based Research in Motion (RIM) over the latter's BlackBerry wireless devices.

Filing an amicus curiae brief earlier this month with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (following a lower court ruling in 2002, and delivery of the Appeals Court's own verdict in December 2004, which stated that RIM had infringed NTP's e-mail 'push' patents), the Canadian authorities explained that:

"Given the number and proliferation of businesses that conduct integrated operations across the Canada-United States border, the panel's decision affects a substantial number of businesses with Canadian operations, including those carried on using networks and telecommunications."

The brief continued:

"Canada is especially concerned that the uncertainty resulting from the panel's decision, with its potential for being applied in an inappropriately extraterritorial or discriminatory fashion, may have the further troubling effect of chilling innovation by Canadian companies operating in key industry sectors in Canada, particularly the high technology sector."

The Canadian government therefore asked the Appeals Court to reconsider its finding that the function in BlackBerry devices which automatically receives and displays new e-mail messages without any prompting from the end user represents an infringement of NTP's intellectual property.

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