San Francisco – Indian American owned company Mformation Technologies was recently awarded millions by a US court in San Francisco for patent infringement by Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry.
The US Federal District Court in northern California on July 20 found that Canada based RIM infringed US company Mformation Technologies’ patent related to wireless mobile device management in RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), used by corporate enterprise customers to manage and secure their BlackBerry devices.
Commenting on the decision, Mformation lead attorney Amar Thakur of Foley & Lardner, LLP said, “Our legal system allows small businesses to protect their patented inventions against unauthorized use by large corporations. Today the legal system worked and inventors everywhere should feel encouraged by the court’s conclusion.”
The court awarded Mformation $147.2 million dollars in damages based on past sales of BES-connected BlackBerry smartphones in the US from late 2008, when the lawsuit was filed, through the trial date. This award did not include future royalties, past and future US government sales, or past and future non-US sales, according to the court decision.
Welcoming the decision, patent inventor and Mformation founder/CTO Rakesh Kushwaha said, “Our patents are a core part of our innovative products, and are fundamental to the methods used for device management in the market today.”
“Mformation created the mobile device management category in the late 1990s and was innovating in this area well before most of the market understood the fundamental importance of wireless mobility management, said Kushwaha, adding, “We ensured that our early innovations in device management were put through rigorous legal assessment by applying for patents on these innovations in the United States and abroad.”
Highlighting the role played by the patented technologies as essential to many critical mobile device management tasks being used by operators, service providers and enterprises around the world, including remote device configuration, lock/wipe and application management, Kushwaha concluded, “With a total of 27 patents granted or pending, our IP portfolio will allow us to continue to shape the future of the mobile device management market.”
Mformation’s patent portfolio covers the entire range of over-the-air (OTA) device management functions, touching wireless devices activated and managed in all WiFi and cellular networks around the world. (IATNS)