New patent legal woes for RIM

Mobile email provider Visto is to sue RIM over alleged patent infringement

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) is facing new legal woes after mobile email provider Visto announced its intention to sue over alleged patent infringement.

Visto won a similar case on Friday after a jury in the federal court for the Eastern District of Texas awarded damages of about $3.6m from mobile email provider Seven Networks. Seven was found to have wilfully 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, chairman, president and chief executive at Visto.

"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 behaviour.

"Under the law, which protects consumers from products that contain infringing technology, RIM should not be able to sell the BlackBerry system."

RIM paid $612m in damages to NTP in March, a settlement that hit its share price. 

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

• US Patent No. 6,085,192: System And Method For Securely Synchronizing Multiple Copies Of A Workspace Element In A Network

• US Patent No. 6,023,708: System And Method For Using A Global Translator To Synchronize Workspace Elements Across A Network

• US Patent No. 6,708,221: System And Method For Globally And Securely Accessing Unified Information In A Computer Network

• US Patent No. 6,151,606: System And Method For Using A Workspace Data Manager To Access, Manipulate And Synchronize Network Data