Crackberry maker scores significant victory over Visto

A ROW over a vast bill submitted by RIM's lawyers has overshadowed a significant win for the Crackberry maker. It actually beat arch rival, Visto, in a UK court. This leaves Visto on something of a back foot.

Yet, a deafening silence has descended over the whole sorry episode. You'd expect one side to have issued a statement saying how its stance was totally vindicated and the other to announce an immediate appeal.

But nothing of the sort has happened so far. Despite the INQ's attempts to reach Visto, there's been no news yet of its next plan of action. All RIM did was email a statement from its lawyers.

The situation could get very interesting because as long ago as May 2006, Visto announced it was taking RIM along with Microsoft and Good to court over claimed patents on mobile email.
Only last month [March], Microsoft finally settled with Visto. A move which the Beast might now be regretting.

The INQ can't trace any settlement between Visto and Good – especially now that Good is actually owned by handset manufacturer, Motorola.

So that left RIM to sort out. But Visto has just lost one leg of the battle in a UK court where RIM virtually accused Visto of attempting to shut down its Crackberry service.

Somewhat embarrassingly, RIM's request for its £5.2 million legal fees was blasted by Justice Floyd who'd calculated that the lawyers must have spent the equivalent of nine years' worth of man hours working on the case.

He told the court – when cutting the fees due -that he would have expected the RIM legal team to be able to recite all of the documents in the case by heart if they'd really spent that much time on the job.

A rather forlorn Allen & Overy - which represented RIM at the trial - commented, "The reality is that the legal costs were a tiny fraction of the value of RIM's business, which was put at risk through this litigation."

However, it pointed out that its efforts had benefited not only RIM the industry as a whole by "removing Visto's ability to pursue disproportionate financial gain from the patent."

Shame the 'tiny fraction' argument doesn't seem to apply to other professionals, fees, isn't it? µ