BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) won a lawsuit that accused the company of breaching three patents of the Dutch semiconductor company NXP BV. NXP dragged the Canadian smartphone company into court, saying that the BlackBerry phone and PlayBook tablet have infringed on the patents related to designs, data transmission and other features of the devices.
Some relief for BlackBerry
The federal jury in Florida gave its ruling in favor of BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB). Initially, in 2012, NXP accused the smartphone maker for breaching six of its patents demanding unspecific damages, including triple damages, but later it was reduced to three patents.
The trial was taken up on March 24th and the jurors concluded in favor of BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB). NXP was not satisfied with the ruling, and said that the company is considering every option for appeal. There was no response from BlackBerry over the issue.
NXP was authorized for the patents between 1997 and 2008 including patents in communications and integrated circuit design and manufacturing. Patents related to communication included technology for a method and communication device for increasing the range of data transmission rates in wireless local area network. The second patent included a mobile cellular telephone with a GPS receiver. NXP, an Eindhoven, Netherlands-based company was spun off from Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV in 2006. The company is listed on NASDAQ as NXP semiconductors NV.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) Chief Legal Officer Steve Zipperstein said in a statement that the company is looking forward to a scenario when companies will not be ordered to spend a large amount of funds and time to defend tiresome patent cases such as the recent one, and instead invest in their own resource to take the innovation ahead.
A rising trend
Suing one another over the patent infringement issues has become common amongst the manufacturers of smartphones, tablet computers and operating software, including companies such as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Samsung Electronics Co and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG).
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) was the pioneer in the smartphone segment, but the company took a steep downturn with the advent of Apple’s iPhone and gadgets running on Google’s Android operating system.
BlackBerry stocks declined 15 cents to C$8.62 on Monday trading, in Toronto. BlackBerry shares dropped 14 cents to $7.86 on the NASDAQ.
The case is NXP BV v. Blackberry Ltd et al, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, No. 12-00498.
