Research In Motion Ltd. received more positive news from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Thursday, when examiners there rejected the second of five patents at the heart of a legal suit that threatens to shut down BlackBerry service in the United States.
Just three weeks earlier, the PTO rejected another patent awarded NTP Inc., the Arlington, Va.-based company that won an infringement case against RIM.
Both rulings are preliminary decisions in a process that could take many more months to complete, but the PTO has indicated in both cases that it expects decisions to eventually be final. The PTO is still reviewing the three remaining contested patents. NTP will be able to appeal the final rulings.
At an earlier level of review, the PTO released initial rulings rejecting all five patents. This multistaged review process is standard at the PTO once it decides to re-examine patents it has issued.
The legal fight centres on several specific claims within the patents. This summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington upheld a lower court's ruling that RIM had infringed on seven claims. It reversed or vacated the lower court's finding of infringement on nine of the 16 litigated patent claims.
NTP has said that at the end of the day it only needs to win one of the contested claims to withstand the review process.
