Blackberry is Sweet

Who called it? As I've said over the past few months, no way Research In Motion was going to let another company nor the US Government shut its service down. Friday afternoon the word came down that Canada-based RIM settled its patent lawsuit with NTP for a mere $612.5 million.

Who's the winner? Not RIM, really. They could have paid NTP about $450million a while back to stop all this crap. But RIM stood tall with its wireless guns telling a judge that it owned all the patent rights to the wireless services it uses.

NTP came out smelling pretty well with a nice pay day but I think they - along with other such piddly, patent-holding landrush companies - should go away. NTP was looking for a loophole buy buying a patent and simply holding on to it. For no other reason than to hold RIM at ransom and scare the hell out of every CEO in America who uses a Blackberry.

It's over for now. And that means maybe I can put my canned answer back on the shelf. Over the past few months the question I have been asked the most on my show and at parties as been "should I trash my Blackberry now and look for another device?" My reply had been a strong NO. The Blackberry, IMHO, is the greatest tech product invented in the past 10 years. The US Government, law enforcement agencies, thousands of companies and geeks like me would have come to a standstill. There was simply too much for RIM to lose not to mention the possible explosion of the time-space continuim.

So go back to your Blackberry prayer position, climb down from the rooftop jumping point and get back to your normal life. Blackberry is back, baby.