Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry device, has filed a British patent lawsuit against Visto Corp., pushing the companies' intellectual property dispute into Europe.
RIM sued Visto on Tuesday to invalidate a patent on a system for synchronizing e-mail, according to documents submitted to the High Court in London. RIM is already contesting a similar patent case against Visto in Texas.
The lawsuit marks the second time RIM has sought to defend its intellectual property in the U.K., where it has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The Waterloo, Ont.-based company won a British patent infringement claim brought by Luxembourg-based licensing firm Inpro Licensing Sarl in February.
A month later, RIM agreed to pay NTP Inc. $612.5-million (U.S.) to settle a separate U.S. patent lawsuit over BlackBerry technology.
Closely held Visto makes e-mail software applications for mobile phone networks such as Vodafone Group PLC and Cingular Wireless LLC. Suzanne Panoplos, a spokeswoman for the Redwood City, Calif.-based company, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Visto filed a patent case against RIM at a federal court in Marshall, Tex., on April 28, the same day it won a $3.6-million verdict in the same court against rival Seven Networks Inc.
RIM, which has more than five million subscribers worldwide, filed a counterclaim on May 1, asking another federal court in Dallas to rule that it's not infringing Visto's patents.
