For the hefty price of about $612.5 million dollars, Research In Motion(RIM), the company responsible for the BlackBerry’s claim to fame, has finally settled with rival NTP, who holds the patents that make the Blackberry possible. All of the outstanding patent issues have finally been settled, and Blackberry users around the country are happily sighing in relief that they won’t have to bear through a possible interruption of service if the patent battle had not gone RIM’s way. And well, it looked like it wasn’t going RIM’s way.

The judge in the patent case was clearly unhappy that the two parties hadn’t managed to settle the dispute without the court, and made it clear that he expected the issue to be resolved as a negotiating table and not by the gavel. Well, it looks like everyone got their wish and the issue should be resolved once and for all. NTP gives up the rights to sue in the future for use of its patents, and RIM gets to keep the Blackberry service running as is without inturruption, although writing a pretty hefty check in the meantime.

At the same time, it’s worth mentioning that users of Blackberry systems around the country should finally come to term with the fact that sometimes it’s not good to be locked into a proprietary service and solution for the type of service you want without a viable alternative. Some people seem to have been learning this lesson by looking for other techniques and methods to send and recieve email on the go. Here’s the whole story:

[ PC World :: Shutdown Avoided as BlackBerry Suit Is Settled ]