Businessmen and executives dependent on their BlackBerry mobile communication devices are in for a tough month as a district court in Virginia, USA decides on the fate of the BlackBerry on the 24th of February.

The protracted legal battle started in 2001 when US-based technology firm NTP sued Canadian-based Research-In-Motion (RIM) for allegedly infringing on several patents NTP owns, particularly with regard to email-push services. A Virginia state court decided in favor of NTP in early 2003, a decision upheld by an appeals court in December of 2004. NTP and RIM were supposed to go for settlement in December of 2004, but the deal did not push through. RIM was hoping for Supreme Court intervention late 2005, but the US Supreme court decided not to touch the case, instead referring it back to the local courts.

RIM claims the likelihood of adverse effects on the economies of the western world, inasmuch as a good number of companies worldwide employ the BlackBerry technology for their communications needs. Company formation and business solutions experts in the UK are hoping for the best, that in the event that a service outage does occur, companies would have sought contingency measures to counter this.

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