Lucius Fox

Chief Executive Officer of Wayne Enterprises

July 17th 2012

RIM faces $147M in damages from Mformation patent suit

1 note

Poor Research in Motion just can’t catch a break. The BlackBerry maker has been ordered to pay $147.2 million to Mfomation Technologies over a patent dispute regarding wireless device remote management, Reuters reports.

Yesterday a San Francisco federal court ordered RIM to pay an $8 fee for each BlackBerry device connected to its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, according to Mformation attorney Amar Thakur. A RIM spokesperson, meanwhile, said the company could overturn the ruling with pending legal motions.

Posted at 2:16pm and tagged with: Research In Motion, RIMM, Mformation, IP, Intellectual Property, Patents,.

April 14th 2012

Apple and RIM hit with patent suit for “drag,” “tap” and “scroll”

A Texas shell company says Apple and others have infringed on technology for basic smartphone gestures like dragging and “double tap.” The patents were issued in 2007 to a Taiwanese maker of touchpad technology.

In lawsuits filed this week, a shell called “Touchscreen Gestures” claims devices like the iPhone, the iPad and the Blackberry Playbook are infringing on its technology. A related suit accuses Samsung’s Galaxy tablet of violating the same patents.

The patents are US  Patent 7190356 (“A method of identifying double tap gesture”), US Patent 7180506 (“A method for identifying a movement of single tap 7180506) and US Patent 7184031 (“A method identifying a drag gesture”).

Posted at 5:53pm and tagged with: Apple, Apple Inc., APPL, RIM, Research In Motion, RIMM, Patents, Law, Intellectual Property, IP,.

April 11th 2012

Is RIM’s Hardware Division in the Red?

1 note

As if Research In Motion’s immediate future wasn’t already bleak enough, today comes more ugly news. RIM’s latest regulatory filing implies that its flagship hardware division may be losing money.

The document reveals that in RIM’s February 2012 fiscal year, gross margins on hardware fell to 20 percent from 36 percent on a GAAP basis, and to 25 percent on a non-GAAP basis. And, according to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, if you factor operating costs and inventory charges into those numbers, hardware-operating margins slip into negative territory: -8 percent on a GAAP basis; -3 percent on a non-GAAP basis, or -4 percent on an adjusted non-GAAP basis.

Posted at 3:41pm and tagged with: BlackBerry, Research In Motion, RIM, RIMM, Technology, Mobile, Devices, Hardware, Business,.

March 28th 2012

Research In Motion Earnings: The RIM Reaper Cometh

1 note

Research In Motion will post its fiscal fourth-quarter results this Thursday, and Wall Street analysts are already gritting their teeth in anticipation.

To wit, this recent note from Barclays Capital analyst Jeff Kvaal, which sums up RIM’s situation heading into earnings under the headline “Grim And Getting Grimmer.”

Posted at 4:48pm and tagged with: Research In Motion, RIM, Research In Motion Limited, RIMM, Business, Finance,.