Research-In-Motion Settles With Motorola
In late February, Motorola filed an ITC Section 337 action against Blackberry maker Research-In-Motion. On Friday, Research-In-Motion announced that it has ended all worldwide patent disputes with Motorola.
According to the announcement,
Under the Agreement, Motorola and RIM will benefit from a long-term, intellectual property cross-licensing arrangement involving the parties receiving crosslicenses of various patent rights, including patent rights relating to certain industry standards and certain technologies, such as 2G, 3G, 4G, 802.11 and wireless email . In addition, the parties will transfer certain patents to each other.
The ITC complaint identified filed in February identified U.S. Patent Nos. 5,319,712; 5,359,317; 5,569,550; 6,232,970; and 6,272,333.
- 5,319,712 is directed to cryptographic protection of data streams using packet sequence numbers;
- 5,359,317 is directed to storing selected portions of received messages in selected memory elements;
- 5,569,550 is directed to a battery pack;
- 6,232,970 is directed to a user interface supporting "light" data entry (e.g., fewer keystrokes); and
- 6,272,333 is directed to sending data to a wireless device only after checking that the wireless device has an installed application that can access the data.
The '970 patent looks like it was written to cover the old Rolodex "Rex" credit-card sized personal digital assistant (PDA). I had a version 1 of this product in the '90s, but quickly switched to a full-sized PDA despite the larger form factor.
