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The U.S. patent office has ruled against the last of five NTP Inc. patents at the center of a legal dispute between NTP and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., NTP confirmed Thursday.

NTP, a closely held U.S.-based patent holding company, successfully sued RIM in 2002 for patent infringement and later won an injunction, stayed pending appeal, to halt U.S. sales of RIM’s wireless e-mail device.

At the same time, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been re-examining the validity of eight NTP patents, five of which were involved in the patent-infringement suit.

This is good news for RIM, but the company cautions investors on being overly optimistic with the ruling, saying that it only has a partial bearing on the case. I think this weekend’s upgrade of T-Mobile’s BlackBerry service is a good indication that RIM is well on their way of circumventing the NTP claims entirely. Speaking of the service upgrade, other than sporadic delivery of email, it was relatively painless. Well done T-Mo.

[via MSNBC]

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