RIM Ordered to Pay Up

Can RIM recover from this?

A federal jury in San Francisco has found Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) liable for $147.2 million in damages for infringing on patents held by Mformation Technologies Inc.

Mformation, of Edison, N.J., sued Research in Motion in October 2008, alleging that Canada-based RIM infringed on its 1999 invention for remotely managing wireless devices. Mformation’s software allows companies to remotely access employee cell phones to do software upgrades, change passwords or to wipe data from phones that have been stolen.

Officials at RIM, which has been struggling with plummeting sales, a declining stock and other problems, did not provide a comment Saturday.

Thakur said the jury ruled that Research in Motion should pay his client $8 for each of the 18.4 million Blackberrys that were connected to the Blackberry Enterprise Server, from the day the lawsuit was filed until the time of the trial. That’s a total of $147.2 million.

This is a huge hit for RIM.