Defendant

Research in Motion Corp.

1 case as defendant.

Cases
1
Active
0
1 closed
Filed
2008
Top venue
D. Nebraska
1 case

Company profile

Research In Motion Corp. ("RIM") was the Canadian developer of the BlackBerry wireless platform. The parent was Research In Motion Limited, founded in 1984 by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin and headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario; the "Research In Motion Corp." named in U.S. suits was its U.S. entity. RIM was publicly traded (TSX: RIM, Nasdaq: RIMM) and at its peak was one of the world's largest smartphone vendors, with annual revenue approaching US$18–20 billion in fiscal 2012 and roughly 17,000 employees. In January 2013 the company renamed itself BlackBerry Limited (NYSE/TSX: BB) and later exited the handset business.

Products/operations. RIM designed, manufactured, and marketed wireless handhelds and related software and services: BlackBerry handsets (the Bold, Curve, Pearl, Storm and Torch lines), the Inter@ctive two-way pager, BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the BlackBerry email push service, BlackBerry Messenger, the QNX-based BlackBerry Tablet OS and PlayBook tablet, and carrier/enterprise licensing and OEM arrangements. This is an operating company, not a shell licensor.

Litigation posture. RIM appears in the tracked data only as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases, 2 defendant cases) — the classic profile of an operating company on the receiving end of PAE suits. Both plaintiffs are patent-holding entities asserting portfolios they acquired or controlled rather than products they sell: SmartPhone Technologies LLC was an Acacia Research subsidiary (per Stanford's NPE Litigation Database and the Federal Circuit's Futurewei v. Acacia decision), and Prism Technologies LLC was a licensing company later acquired by Internet Patents Corp./Prism Technologies Group.

Notable cases. SmartPhone Technologies LLC v. Research In Motion Corp. (E.D. Tex., filed 2010-03-03) was one of a series of Acacia-affiliated handset suits concentrated in the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas. Prism Technologies LLC v. Research in Motion, Ltd. et al. (D. Neb., filed 2008-12-29) asserted Prism's network-authentication patents against wireless carriers and device makers. Broader context: RIM's most prominent patent fight of the era, NTP v. RIM, ended in a US$612.5 million settlement in 2006 — that case is not in the tracked list.