Despite the intense media buildup in the final weeks of February, the BlackBerry saga is still pretty much in a stalemate. U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer rendered no decision Feb. 24, and we're left to wonder still if the world's most popular mobile e-mail service will be shut down any day now or if it will continue to weather the storm of litigation brought by patent-holding company NTP. Judge Spencer wants a settlement. In fact, everyone from Wall Street to the millions of BlackBerry subscribers wants a settlement, but that settlement isn't forthcoming.

The common perception in the industry is NTP is responsible for the current deadlock. As a holding company, NTP hasn't commercialized any technology and offers no commercial service — it's just a company on paper defended by a team of lawyers standing in the way of anyone trying to make a proper business case out of mobile e-mail. But such a depiction isn't fair. NTP may not have built a business off its intellectual property, but it certainly doesn't mean that the late NTP Co-founder Thomas Campana didn't develop the technology legitimately. Many innovators have dreamed up technology they haven't been able to practically capitalize on in the market. That's why patent law exists, to protect those ideas.

On the other hand, Research in Motion took a niche market — which no vendor or carrier had been able to capitalize on — and turned it into a booming business. Thanks to RIM, e-mail is considered one of the hottest (dare we say “killer”?) applications in wireless, spawning numerous imitators and innovators. Starting as an outsider, RIM has built a powerful business as both a hand-held vendor and a service provider. It certainly has a right to defend what it has accomplished, even if it is infringing on NTP's intellectual property.

Both companies appear to have a legitimate stake in the wireless e-mail revolution RIM began; the problem is whether pride, stubbornness or just plain greed has clouded what would otherwise be legitimate claims. RIM is implying that the loss of its e-mail service would shake the economy and our public security at its foundations. It seems to have trouble accepting the fact that others could have made contributions to the business and technology it has built. Meanwhile, NTP appears to have transformed from a company trying to protect its intellectual property to one that's trying to milk every last possible cent out of anyone having anything to do with wireless e-mail.

Both companies have taken this fight beyond the thresholds of good business sense. The more they fight in court and the more the threat of shutdown looms, the more scared corporate customers become. Once those customers start fleeing en mass, RIM and NTP will have destroyed the business over which they're fighting.