Found this article about RIM and NTP patent lawsuit. (via Slashdot). It is so absurb that I don’t even know where to start. A few million could settle it initially become a billion dollar lawsuit.

Through arrogance, blunder and bad advice, RIM’s potential bill had shot up from a few million dollars before the trial to roughly $20-million when its case headed south at trial, to now hundreds of millions of dollars.

And still Mr. Lazaridis and RIM didn’t settle. Friends and colleagues say Mr. Lazaridis is uncompromising by nature. “Mike is the kind of guy who doesn’t make business compromises. You know how people plead guilty, even when they know they’re innocent, just to get a reduced sentence — Mike wouldn’t do that,” says Bill Frezza, who worked with RIM on prototype wireless devices in the early 1990s while he worked at Ericsson Canada Ltd.

RIM’s legal hole grew deeper still. Judge Spencer issued a surprise order barring the sale of BlackBerrys in the United States. He agreed to stay the injunction if RIM would put an amount equal to the damage award in escrow. The total is now more than $240-million.