RIM faces $147M in damages from Mformation patent suit

Poor Research in Motion just can’t catch a break. The BlackBerry maker has been ordered to pay $147.2 million to Mfomation Technologies over a patent dispute regarding wireless device remote management, Reuters reports.

Yesterday a San Francisco federal court ordered RIM to pay an $8 fee for each BlackBerry device connected to its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, according to Mformation attorney Amar Thakur. A RIM spokesperson, meanwhile, said the company could overturn the ruling with pending legal motions.

The news comes on the heels of a terrible quarterly earnings report for RIM, where it saw a huge operating loss,  announced the layoff of 5,000 workers, and confirmed that it would be delaying its next-gen BlackBerry 10 devices until 2013. The company’s stock took a further beating last week after a disappointing annual shareholder meeting.

Luckily for RIM, the damages only include BlackBerry devices sold in the U.S. up through the trial, and not future devices or international sales. But that’s a small silver lining for the cash-strapped company, which went as far as to sell its corporate jet to save money, according to a recent report. The damages from this suit won’t crush RIM, but it’s certainly the last thing the company needs to deal with right now.