Final NTP patent rejected

The U.S. Patent Office today rejected another patent in question in the RIM-NTP battle, possibly letting RIM off the hook for all five of the original patents in NTP’s infringement lawsuit. The battle is far from over, though, as NTP can still appeal the patent office’s decision in the next 30 days, after which the patent office will make a final decision.

Even after the final ruling, NTP could still appeal the cases before a patent appeals board, dragging the question of validity out even further. That’s time RIM doesn’t have, since the federal courts are proceeding with the lawsuit without waiting for the patent office’s final decision. The federal judge presiding over the case, James Spencer, has called a Feb. 24 hearing to decide whether to re-impose a injunction against RIM to shut down its popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service and also to rule on whether RIM can implement a software “workaround” that would bypass the technology that allegedly infringes on NTP’s patents and keep the service running.

Today NTP partner and RIM competitor Visto filed a declaration in Spenser’s court stating that the other wireless e-mail solutions could take up the slack for RIM solutions if it were to go dark. Visto officials claimed RIM is trying to mislead the courts to believe that a shutdown in service would cripple the economy and the even compromise national defense.

“There are no insuperable obstacles to prevent Blackberry users from switching to a licensed competitor such as Visto, within a very short timeframe,” Chief Operating Officer Jean Tripier said in the filing. “With multiple alternatives available, including Visto, there is no reason why BlackBerry users could not find an acceptable licensed alternative within 30 days.”

While the e-mail alternatives are certainly available, transitioning to another e-mail platform could be difficult and costly, especially for an enterprise with a sizable investment in RIM’s architecture. RIM’s platform is not only integrated into companies e-mail servers, the software and the handheld devices used are both proprietary. J. Gold Associates estimated that an enterprise with 1000 BlackBerry users would incur $845,000 in expense--$845 per handheld--to switch over to another platform like Visto’s, Good Technology’s or Microsoft’s. That cost would be divided evenly between replacing IT software in the network and the end-user devices, the research firm said.