Blackberry 2012 Annual Report Download - page 84

Risks Related to Intellectual Property
The Company may infringe on the intellectual property rights of others.
The Company’s commercial success depends upon the Company not infringing intellectual property rights owned by others. The
industry in which the Company competes has many participants that own, or claim to own, intellectual property, including
participants that have been issued patents and may have filed patent applications or may obtain additional patents and proprietary
rights for technologies similar to those used by the Company in its products. Some of these patents may grant very broad protection to
the third-party owners of the patents. Patents can be issued very rapidly and there is often a great deal of secrecy surrounding pending
patents. The Company cannot determine with certainty whether any existing third-party patents or the issuance of any new third-party
patents would require the Company to alter its technologies, pay for licenses or cease certain activities. Third parties have asserted,
and in the future may assert, intellectual property infringement claims against the Company and against its customers and suppliers.
The Company may be subject to these types of claims either directly or indirectly through indemnities against these claims that it
provides to certain customers, partners and suppliers. There can be no assurance that the Company’s attempts to negotiate favorable
intellectual property indemnities with its suppliers for infringement of third-party intellectual property rights will be successful or that
a supplier’s indemnity will cover all damages and losses suffered by the Company and its customers, partners and other suppliers due
to infringing products, or that the Company can secure a license, modification or replacement of a supplier’s products with non-
infringing products that may otherwise mitigate such damages and losses.
Many intellectual property infringement claims are brought by entities whose principal business model is to secure patent licensing-
based revenue from operating companies. As such entities do not typically generate their own products or services, the Company
cannot deter their patent infringement claims based on counterclaims that they infringe patents in the Company’s portfolio or by
entering into cross-licensing arrangements. Litigation and claims advanced in the ITC have been and will likely continue to be
necessary to determine the scope, enforceability and validity of third-party proprietary rights or to establish the Company’s
proprietary rights.
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