Posted on April 3, 2008 at 4:36 PM
Filed under: Acquisitions | Intellectual property
Tagged: acquisitions , blackberry , Chris Greendale , earnings , Eatoni Ergonomics , intangible assets , IP , Kodiak Venture Partners , licensing , Motorola , NTP , patent , research in motion , revenue , RIM

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There was an intriguing tidbit in the upbeat results that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. reported Wednesday: In the fiscal quarter just ended (which saw revenue surge 102% above the same period a year ago), the company also spent $310 million acquiring intangible assets. What did they buy? No response yet to an e-mail inquiry earlier Thursday. But it's interesting to note just because RIM is so intellectual-property driven, as witness to its $612.5 million patent dispute settlement with NTP two years ago, or for that matter a dispute with Motorola Inc. that flared up in February.

A scan of press releases on the RIM site didn't identify any activity of this kind in the last quarter. It did turn up a release from October 2007, saying RIM had settled yet another IP dispute, this one with Eatoni Ergonomics Inc. (which specializes in predictive text technology for ambiguous keyboards) by licensing a patent and making an equity investment in Eatoni. In this part of the tech world, apparently, it's always something.

Also worth noting: In September, Chris Greendale of Kodiak Venture Partners told our sister blog Tech Confidential that he thought RIM should be making software acquisitions. - Kenneth Klee


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