At the end of March, the jury in California ruled that patents owned by Immersion Corporation were infringed by Sony Computer Entertainment in their Sony PlayStation systems. The technology concerned vibrating control systems such as those in Sony's "Dual Shock" controllers, which provide the player with vibratory sensations to match the action in a game (a technology known as "haptics").

Sony has been ordered to stop sale, manufacture, use and import the systems, controllers and games which the court judged as being infringing, and to pay a total of $90.7 million US dollars based on sales of the infringing products. Sony is expected to appeal the decision, and may continue its activities during the appeal process.

For more information, see www.immersion.com & (in Swedish) www.di.se

The Canadian makers of the Blackberry mobile email device, Research In Motion (RIM), recently paid $450 million US dollars to patent-holding company NTP. In August 2003, a court in Virginia found that NTP's patents were infringed and ordered RIM to pay $54 million in damages. RIM appealed, but the initial judgement was partially upheld by the Appeal Court.

RIM have now settled the case with NTP, in an agreement which covers all payments to date, and which provides RIM with licenses to use NTP technology in all future products and applications. NTP has no products, but rather buys and sells patents and earns money through infringement proceedings and licensing agreements.

The case has caused controversy, with the Canadian government becoming involved in the appeal. As the server used by BlackBerry is based in Ontario, the Canadian government claimed that US patent laws have no jurisdiction. Furthermore, re-examination of the NTP patents in early April has resulted in one of them being rejected by the US Patent Office.

For more information, see www.rim.com & (in Swedish) www.di.se

As these two cases show, a large settlement in a patent suit does not always mean that the party making the payment is guilty. Furthermore, payment does not guarantee that the legal process is finished. In the Sony case, a very large sum has been paid, but Sony will continue selling and importing the infringing products and will probably appeal the decision. The even larger payment made by RIM may limit any future legal proceedings, but as the patent in suit was rejected by the US Patent Office, one might well ask whether payment was made too early. As in these cases, if a patent dispute involves more than one legal process (e.g. appeal or further examination), one would be wise to make a small payment to begin with, and further payments depending on the outcome of any later processes.

The BlackBerry case also provides interesting US case law on cross-border patent infringement. Traditionally, the patent rights of a patentee are limited by the borders of those countries in which a patent has been obtained. However, today's communication technology allows different elements of e.g. a computer or telephone network to be placed in different countries. Can one avoid patent infringement simply by placing one element of a patented system in a country in which no patent rights exist? This issue was specifically addressed by the court, who concluded that one cannot avoid infringement by locating one or more parts of a system outside the USA - one must consider where the majority of the infringing market activity takes place.