The New York Times is reporting that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will review the decision last August where Research in Motion was ordered to pay over $53 million dollars to NTP, a Virginia-based patent holding firm that doesn't making any devices, for infringing on NTP's patent with its BlackBerry wireless handhelds. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, in Richmond, Virginia, handed down the decision.

The NTP suite alleged patent infringement on the part of RIM. The District Court judge ruled last summer that RIM had to stop selling BlackBerry handhelds in the U.S., its largest market, because technology within the two-way wireless devices infringed on NTP patents.

With the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit ready to take the case on, it appears the questions surrounding the future of Research In Motion's future may soon be answered. RIM was originally accused of violating eight NTP patents. The appeal is based on a jury verdict rendered on November 21, 2002, which only covers five patents.

And sincethe total cost to RIM may go as high as 100 million or more, RIM will probably cease to exits, as least in its current form, negating any ability for NTP to get any more royalties in the future.

Even with its legal troubles, RIM ontinues to forge new partnerships. This month, it inked deals with Canadian telco Rogers Wireless and Belgian operator Mobistar. It has also teamed with IBM to integrate WebSphere Everyplace Access mobile middleware and BlackBerry Enterprise Server and made an agreement with PalmSource to develop BlackBerry connectivity on Palm OS.

According to the most recent statistics by market research firm Canalys, RIM came in fourth during the first quarter of this year for mobile device sales worldwide, as it succeeded in doing better at penetrating the European market.

North America accounted for fewer than 80% of shipments compared to over 90% a year earlier. Overall, RIM jumped from only 2.2% of the market with 94,670 handhelds shipped to 6.4% of the market with 379,990 devices shipped. That's an increase in shipments of over 300%.

Gartner reported earlier this year that RIM, which passed one million subscribers a couple of months back, thrived in the fourth quarter of 2003 with nearly the same total number of devices shipped in that one quarter as all of 2002. RIM also posted the strongest growth rate among top-tier vendors in 2003, as shipments increased 121% from 2002, and approximately 35 to 40 % of recent RIM shipments were upgrades of older RIM devices.