Motorola sued by RIM
February 19, 2008
On February 18th, the Research in Motion let out the news that it was taking legal action against the Motorola Company for breaking and violating many Intellectual Property Rights. RIM, the smart phone maker based in Ontario, says that Motorola violated many patent licensing agreements. RIM said that they are suing the company mainly for the patents which were used for wireless devices like RIM’s Blackberry e-mail devices and Motorola’s Razr smart phones.
RIM officials said that the company, based in Waterloo in Ontario, is now asking a court in Dallas to pronounce that Motorola is indeed violating the commitments it had made earlier to license the necessary patents to its competitors on a reasonable and fair basis.
Research in Motion, in a court filing that was made on the 16th of February said that Motorola is breaching as many as nine RIM patents and that the company is not performing according to the agreement it had made in 2003. RIM is claiming that Motorola is now refusing to discuss fair terms for extending the agreement beyond the date of January 2008. The interesting thing about the court filing is that it came just one day after Motorola had filed a different suit against the Canadian company saying that it had violated some of Motorola’s patents.
Over the years both companies have competed against each other and collaborated together to bring out new technologies in the field of wireless communication. Both Research In Motion and Motorola have been accredited for coming up with many innovative ideas in the same field. But even while the competition was going on Motorola was the better of the two companies in terms of voice communication, while Research In Motion was focusing its energies to come out with better technologies in the area of Data Communication.
The money that will be involved in the lawsuit will be huge as both the companies are multi-billion dollar companies which have global standing. As a result of the success of Pearl and Blackberry smart phones Research In Motion has now become one of Canada’s leading and valuable wireless communication companies. The suit which was filed by RIM in a U.S. District Court in the district of Texas, says in it that the Motorola Company is seeking to undermine a long standing standards-setting practice in an effort to damage the public image of RIM, which over the years has proved to be a successful rival and competitor.
Responding to the suit that has been filed against them the Motorola spokesperson said on Monday that the company has not yet examined the complaint. But she said that the company strongly believes that all the claims that have been made do not hold any water and that Motorola will be going to defend itself vigorously. When asked about the 2003 agreement she said that since the agreement has expired this January and since both the companies were not able to reach on a mutually suitable agreement, Motorola was not able to extend the agreement.