February 24th remains D-Day for BlackBerry users in the United States, even for the 138 government agencies cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in a brief filed with the District Court deciding the Research In Motion (RIM) patent infringement suit.

Yesterday, Federal judge James R. Spencer turned down the DOJ's request to hold separate hearings to determine the viability of patent holding company and litigant NTP's plan to filter out the estimated 200,000 government users from the more than 3.2 million total U.S. BlackBerry customers should he order a RIM shut out.

One DOJ alternative would have stopped BlackBerry sales to the public, while delaying a government shutdown for national security reasons.

The table is now set for Friday, when judge Spencer will hear arguments to determine RIM’s fate in this country. The hearing may bring to a climax NTP’s five-year old patent suit—a jury first ruled against RIM back in 2002 and a $450 million dollar settlement fell apart last year.

RIM has batted about the idea of implementing a workaround to avoid a shutdown for a while now. The software solution met with some skepticism recently when the company set it forth in some detail; as the workaround could take up to a month for some enterprises to roll out and there's no guarantee the solution would keep the Canadian mob-e-mail vendor out of legal hot water.

Some analysts believe the most important point of the workaround is that of bargaining chip; to possibly kick of a whole series of new challenges from NTP, which would give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPT) time to issue final rejections of more of that company's patents.

The USPT issued a non-final rejection of patent #6,317,592 pertaining to NTP's case against RIM earlier this month. This patent covers five of the seven claims that RIM was ruled to have infringed upon last August. Several NTP patents have been rejected over all, nine in total, giving RIM additional bargaining power.

Nonetheless, the company readily admits it is ready to settle to put the whole matter in the past.

You see, the judge may well decide that RIM is guilty because the patents were on the books when it is supposed to have infringed. He could order a new trial, or - as many fear - block RIM from operating in this country—a remedy no good for anyone - except for RIM's competitors (perhaps) - even NTP, which would then stand to gain nothing from the whole ordeal.

That's why D-Day, or B-Day, could very well mean a settlement is finally on the near horizon.