Things have been looking up for Research in Motion in the companys long-running patent dispute with rival NTP. With the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office overturning NTPs patents left and right, it looked like any justification for NTPs claims that RIM needed to pay up for IP infringement was rapidly slipping away. But RIM has just been dealt a potentially severe blow, as the US Supreme Court has declined to hear the companys appeal to an injunction against the Blackberry brought by a Virginia judge. The case now goes back to Judge James Spencer, who has set a February 1 deadline for RIM, NTP and interested parties to file papers. If the judge enforces his injunction, Blackberry service could go dead in the US -- though the company has long said it has a "workaround" to keep things up and running. We still tend to think RIMs eventually going to prevail in this one, but NTP may have just won enough leverage to push harder for some kind of settlement to make the whole case just go away.

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