Feb 2, 2006, 12:09 GMT
San Francisco - Users of Blackberry mobile e-mail devices got some relief Wednesday when the company that makes the popular gadget scored two important victories in its legal battle against claims that it violated patents.
The company, Research In Motion, has been threatened with an injunction in the case filed in 2001 by NTP Inc, which claimed that the Blackberry violated its patent for a mobile e-mail device.
But a provisional ruling by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Wednesday said that the patent in question does not cover the Blackberry service and should be cancelled.
The U.S. Justice Department also urged the judge in the case to delay any shutdown of the service until it could ascertain how such a move would affect government communications.
Both decisions were seen as a powerful boost for Research in Motion. Its shares jumped 9 per cent in after-hours trading.
The decisions are expected to form the basis for a court ruling set for February 24 on whether the Blackberry service, which has 3.2 million subscribers in the U.S., should be shut down.
While Research in Motion welcomed the decisions, a spokesman for NTP said that the company would appeal.
'We're not rolling over on this and playing dead,' NTP co-founder Don Stout told Bloomberg News, adding that that the company will appeal if the ruling becomes final. 'This is going to be reversed.'
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