Ethics Newsline®

WASHINGTON
The Canadian firm Research In Motion (RIM) reached a settlement with a U.S. patent-holding company late last week to end a lawsuit that had threatened not only the financial stake of the company but the communication lifeline of millions of users of the ubiquitous communication devices called BlackBerrys.

RIM agreed to pay Virginia-based NTP Inc. $612.5 million to end the suit, which had dragged on for years and almost resulted in a court injunction that would have shut down service in the United States, the CBC reported.

NTP had accused RIM of violating its patents in the software used by the BlackBerry, and the case worked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal circuit judge upheld NTP’s claim, Forbes reported.

In addition to the issues relating to intellectual property and courtroom brinksmanship, the dispute raised a provocative legal and ethical question when a judge threatened to shut off service. As the Globe & Mail reported, many emergency workers depend on the devices, and a shutdown would have involved what RIM maintained would be a “never-ending” stream of disputes over which subscribers should have been exempt from the shutdown.