Washington – The Justice Department sought to delay a possible court-ordered shutdown of the Blackberry e-mail system in the U.S. until a separate hearing can be held on how to implement it without affecting government services.
The government didn’t take a position on whether a judge should shut down Research In Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry in a patent dispute.
Instead, its filing Wednesday centered on how any such order, called an injunction, may be carried out, suggesting one option may be to halt only future sales of the product.
“There are still a number of serious questions to be answered as to how an injunction can be implemented so as to continue Blackberry service for governmental and other excepted groups,” the Justice Department wrote in a court filing Wednesday.
Research In Motion, based in Waterloo, Canada, could be ordered to stop sales and service after an appeals court upheld part of a jury’s finding that the company infringed patents owned by a Virginia patent-licensing company.
