Legal News

Motorola-RIM Spat: You Infringed! No You Infringed!

By Dan Slater

It may not be the Jets versus the Sharks, or, for that matter, the Greasers versus the Socs, but there’s a turf war unfolding in wireless land. And it’s playing out — where else? — in the courts.

Cell-phone giant Motorola and BlackBerry-maker RIM exchanged lawsuits on Saturday over a series of cross-licensing agreements gone bad. (Click here and here for reports.) The skirmish arrived amid Motorola’s attempts to capture marketshare for wireless email devices — traditionally RIM’s turf — and RIM’s push to sell more BlackBerrys to cellphone users — traditionally the province of Motorola.

In an action filed in district court in Texas, RIM alleges that Motorola is infringing on its patents and “is demanding exorbitant royalties . . . for patents that Motorola claims are essential to various standards for mobile wireless telecommunications” — such as as GSM technology — “and wireless computing that RIM practices.”

Motorola fought back by filing two lawsuits against RIM in Texas and Delaware. Motorola is challenging RIM’s patents and arguing that RIM is infringing on certain Motorola patents.

The spat reportedly stems from the competitors’ failure to agree on renewal terms of a 2003 pact that covered a range of wireless patents owned by one company and licensed by the other.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 19, 2008 (boomark / email).