February 18, 2003

The New York Times reports that in December the director of the Patent and Trademark Office, James E. Rogan ordered a rare reexamination of the five patents that were central to NTP Inc.'s victory last November over Research in Motion (RIM) in a patent infringement suit that could spell the end to RIM’s Blackberry line. NTP has now sued claiming the director; a former Congressman was improperly lobbied by RIM. NTP has these patents via a defunct national paging system. If their win is not overturned they could stop RIM from selling Blackberry pagers. 1:52:00 PM