RIM boosted by settlement

The wireless and financial industries let out a huge sigh of relief over the weekend after Friday's late announcement that Research In Motion and NTP reached a $612.5 million settlement that will keep 3 million plus U.S. BlackBerry devices running into perpetuity.

In fact, the markets rewarded RIM at their first opportunity, pushing RIM's stock up 14% up to $82 a share, it's highest valuation since its $84.55 peak in June. In fact, RIM today recovered most of the value it lost on NASDAQ since the controversy began and the threat of a country-wide service shutdown began to loom. RIM's price dropped to $51.90 in October, but has slowly been recovering as RIM challenged more of NTP's patents and manage to stave off NTP's petition for an injunction. The competitors that intended to fill the gap if RIM was forced into a shutdown didn't fare so well. Palm, which has agreements in place with Microsoft and Good Technology e-mail services, saw its shares fall 4% after the settlement was announced on Friday.

The RIM-NTP deal puts RIM entirely in the clear. Initial details reveal that RIM would pay out the lump $612.5 million sum--an amount 36% higher than the $450 million the two companies had previously negotiated--but it would not be forced to pay any future royalties on NTP's patents. RIM has already put $450 million in escrow to cover the costs of the settlement, and officials said the difference will be paid out as a one-time charge in RIM's next financial reporting period.