RIM Must Pay $147 Million Over Mformation Patent

Bloomberg: A jury has reached a verdict against RIM in a patent case, handing the troubled smartphone maker a $147.2 million bill for damages. The winner in the case was Mformation Technologies Inc. According to Mformation, the company disclosed details about their technology to RIM during licensing discussions. RIM later included similar technology in BlackBerry Enterprise Server, but did not pay Mformation any licensing fees. The jury said that RIM should have paid $8 per device to license the technology.

RIM has asked the court to reverse the jury’s verdict. “While the verdict is in favor of MFormation on some claims of the single patent remaining in suit, five of eight claims were found to be invalid,” said RIM spokesperson Crystal Roberts. “The court still has to decide the question of ‘Obviousness’ with respect to the validity of the only patent in suit.”