NTP in a press statement said that Chief Justice John Roberts' denial of RIM's request "moves the case back to the district court for re-confirmation of its previously-entered injunction that prohibits RIM from selling, using, or importing into the United States infringing BlackBerry hardware and software until the last of the litigated patents expires in 2012."

RIM sought a similar stay through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which denied its request Oct. 21. RIM promptly filed its application for recall and stay of mandate of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 24. The application was denied Oct. 26, the same day that NTP filed its responsive pleadings.

Stay Denied.

NTP lawyer Kevin Anderson of Wiley Rein & Fielding, Washington, D.C., told BNA that RIM filed a motion with the Federal Circuit the week of Oct. 10, asking it to stay the case, pending RIM's planned petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court. In what Anderson called "pretty fast action by the court," the Federal Circuit issued an unpublished order denying that motion a day after RIM filed its reply brief.

With an earlier request for rehearing by the 12-judge appellate court denied, and the subsequent efforts to stay the lower court proceedings rebuffed by both the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court, the case returns to the district court, where NTP anticipates it will receive a "re-confirmation" of the earlier injunction. Even if some of the patent claims are found on remand not to have been infringed by RIM, NTP said that under Section 283 of the Patent Act, "a patentee is entitled to an injunction for infringement of any single patent claim."