Court victory signals further payout

Maker of the Blackberry Research in Motion (RIM) are facing new legal woes after mobile email provider Visto announced its intention to sue over alleged patent infringement.

On Friday Visto won a similar case to the one it its bringing against RIM, with a jury in the federal court for the Eastern District of Texas awarding damages of about $3.6 million from mobile email provider Seven Networks. Seven was found to have willfully infringed three of Visto's patents.

"Our case against RIM is based on similar technology, law and patents as the case we have just won in federal court against Seven Networks,” said Brian Bogosian, Visto’s chairman, president and chief executive.

“Based on Visto’s sweeping victory in court against Seven Networks on Friday, RIM must understand that there is no place in the mobile email space for this sort of behavior. Under the law, which protects consumers from products that contain infringing technology, RIM should not be able to sell the Blackberry system.”

In March RIM paid $612 million in damages for patent infringement to NTP, a settlement that hit its share price.

Three of the patents in Visto’s win over Seven are identical to those in Visto’s suit against RIM. The four patents Visto charges RIM of infringing are:

• U.S. Patent No. 6,085,192 titled, “System And Method For Securely Synchronizing Multiple Copies Of A Workspace Element In A Network

• U.S. Patent No. 6,023,708, titled “System And Method For Using A Global Translator To Synchronize Workspace Elements Across A Network”

• U.S. Patent No. 6,708,221 titled, “System And Method For Globally And Securely Accessing Unified Information In A Computer Network”

• U.S. Patent No. 6,151,606 titled, “System And Method For Using A Workspace Data Manager To Access, Manipulate And Synchronize Network Data”