Legal briefs filed last week convey the tone of the multiyear dispute, with charges of misleading a federal judge, claims of anti-Americanism and accounts of vital documents gone missing from a library in Norway. In interviews, attorneys for both sides still disagree as to whether RIM conducted an intentionally fraudulent technology demonstration before a federal jury in 2003.

"Some of what's being said sounds nefarious," said one patent attorney not involved in the case who asked not to be identified.

"I wish they'd settle and get it over with," said a frustrated CIO who has 500 workers relying on BlackBerries and also asked not to be named.

One of the more peculiar revelations in the lawsuit appeared in last week's filings to U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer. NTP said RIM "misleads the court." In a footnote from its brief, NTP refers to its failure in 2005 to root out missing documents from a library in Trondheim, Norway, a former Viking seaport, because it alleges RIM was hiding them.

"NTP made an investigation but could not obtain the documents from the one remote Norwegian library from whence they came because RIM checked out the documents and refused to return them," according to NTP's footnote.