Hey, I almost forgot that round one voting is taking place today for the Canadian Blog Awards. I'm nominated in two categories - Best Business Blog and Best Media Blog. If you want to vote, click here.

 

It is not a good day for Research in Motion after it was spanked by a U.S. judge, who said a $450-million settlement reached earlier this year between RIM and NTP over a patent dispute can't be enforced. U.S. District court judge James Spencer will now decide whether and/or how to impose an injunction that could prevent RIM from selling Blackberrys in the U.S. So what does RIM do now? They can settle the patent dispute, which will cost them a whole lot more than $450-million; they can wait until the U.S. Patent Office completes its review of NTP's patents, which RIM disputes; or RIM can implement a software work-around that will continue to do business in the U.S. even if an injunction comes down. My sense is both sides are so well-entrenched and so convinced of their positions, a settlement could be the last of the three options explored. It is important to remember there is little to be gained by NTP if RIM's U.S. business is badly damaged. All NTP wants is its pound of flesh. RIM's willingness to cooperate depends on the terms of a settlement and whether they're attractive enough from a financial and licensing flexibility perspective to convince RIM to put aside its convictions.

 

Everyone loves Craigslist - the Web's biggest classified service. What makes Craigslist unique is its quasi-public service approach to business. The only fees it charges are for listing jobs in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. Everything else is free. It seems like a strange approach given how more revenue it could generate by charging for other things such as aparment listings. Still, revenue this year is expected to be $20-million. Craig Newmark, who started Craig's List and still owns a majority stake, has rejected venture capital financing and an IPO. It's so anti-capitalist that it's refreshingly different. Still, there are people who wonder what Craig's List could be worth if it did business more aggressively and took advantage of its position as the seventh-most popular Web site in the U.S. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky steps into the valuation financial breach with a story that estimates Craigslist could be worth have annual revenue of $550-million. Lashinsky's figure comes from Eric Baker, co-founder of Stubhub.com, an online ticketing site, who examined Craigslist's traffic and transaction volume. So far, Newmark has shown no interest in reaping the financial benefits of Craigslist's success but that could change given his plans to introduce a new online journalism service that would will a void now being met by newspapers. (Update: From what I understand, the new service is a venture headed by Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis) Newmark's plans are still somewhat fuzzy other than it seems to be something based on community or cooperative journalism. If Newmark needs financing to launch this new service (business?), he could easily raise VC or do something with Craiglist's structure (IPO?) or squeeze some more cash from Craiglist through more extensive fees (the most likely possibility). For more insight into Craigslist's approach to business, check out a story I wrote earlier this year in the Financial Post after an interview with COO Jim Buckmaster.
Update: Mathew Ingram has worked up Craigslist's potential value - $330 million- using Om Malik's $38 per unique monthly visitor metric. Ingram says this is "about 16.5 times the company’s revenue, which is higher than the range that Jason Calacanis thinks is reasonable for an online property, but a lot less than the almost 70 times revenue eBay agreed to pay for Skype, based on the $4.1-billion price tag)."