NTP law firm nets $200m of RIM settlement

Mar 16 2006 - 08:58 PM ET | Research In Motion

According to the Wall Street Journal [paid sub req] NTP's law firm received $200 million of the $615 million settlement it reached with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP took the case on a contingency basis which usually means payment comes in the form of one-third the settlement. If the case is lost the law firm doesn't get paid, so while the payment can be higher (in this case, much higher) there is also a risk. Wiley Rein & Fielding has 250 lawyers on staff and 67 of them are partners.

The rest of the settlement has been split up amongst NTP's other shareholders, aproximately two dozen individuals. There was no clause in the settlement that would cause a payback if the US Patent and Trademark office fully nullifies all of NTP's infringed patents. Since all of the patents have been preliminarily rejected, it's likely that after all appeals are finished, the patents that forced RIM's settlement will no longer exist.

Comments from readers


RD. Mar 17 2006

This is totally absurd for a company that holds a fake, useless and non valid patent, was a allowed to BLACK-MAIL a legitimate prosperious Canadian technoloyg company to the top court in the land of the U.S.A. It's only the American way this could happen. Where is fair justice in this world? At the end, the truth of the fact is the system must be really corrupted, and even the higher power of the land could not be respected, when they intervened of the situation.The USPO had REJECTED the said patents twice, yet the honesty of the court involved could not make a fair and respectful decision to their high INTEGRITY, if there is any of it.After all, they did left the impression, that they were thirsty for the pay-out. There was nothing for them to loose than to tarnished the IMAGE of a leading TECHNOLOGY of a world class company and to test the INTEGRITY OF THE COURT SYSTEM. Let have some proper changes in the entire patent industry to prevent this PERVASIVE and BRAZEN act of BLACK-MAILING to anyone. BEST REGARDS.


truongn2 Mar 17 2006

I agree, I think it is crap.


jjjw Mar 25 2006

here there


tester Apr 28 2006

This is a test

new line test


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