The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to intervene in the legal fight between BlackBerry vendor Research In Motion Ltd. and NTP Inc., shutting down one of RIM's stratagems for avoiding a lower-court injunction that would halt most BlackBerry usage in the U.S. Although the latest development in the patent saga wasn't a big surprise, some IT managers said last week that their end users are growing skittish about the BlackBerry service's future.

"The lawyers in my firm are asking me, 'I'm not going to lose service, am I?' Man, people are wiggin' out," said Frank Gillman, director of technology at Allen Matkins Leck Gamble & Mallory LLP in Los Angeles. About 220 workers at the law firm use BlackBerry 7750 devices.

Gillman said his IT staffers are working to "make sure users know that there are already multiple ways to use remote e-mail" through laptops or any Internet-capable devices that can access the firm's secure Web mail system. "But I have to say, BlackBerry makes it so much easier," he added.

Gillman would even be willing to incur added monthly costs if RIM agreed to settle the dispute and pay licensing fees to NTP. "We'd pay more, within reason," he said. "If we had to pay US$5 more a month per device, on top of the current $50 per month, nobody would scream. And I bet if the monthly fee went up another $30, some users might pay it."

Mark Guibert, vice president of corporate marketing at RIM, said in a statement that the Waterloo, Ontario-based company "continues to be open to a reasonable resolution" with Arlington, Va.-based NTP. He also said RIM has developed a software work-around that it could implement to avoid any patent-infringement problems if sales of existing BlackBerry devices were barred.