Don't take away my CrackBerry!

On an ongoing patent infringement battle between Research In Motion and NTP might lead to a BlackBerry service shutdown sometime within the month.  A recent NY Times story states that NTP is asking a federal court in Virginia to block BlackBerry service to everyone in the United States except government and aid agency account holders.  In the meantime, RIM is petitioning the Supreme Court for a review of the patents at issue.  And while the obvious solution is for the two companies to come to a licensing agreement for the patents at issue, apparently talks between the two companies for a $450 million license deal collapsed over final terms back in March.  Although patent law normally takes a backseat to copyright and trademark in the eyes of the public, this particular patent battle is probably striking quite a chord in the 3.65 million BlackBerry users worldwide--one customer (Northwest Airlines) has even demanded a conference call with R.I.M. executives to address their panic.  And my suspicion is that negotiations over the license agreement broke down because NTP was holding out for more money.  Should NTP really have so much power from their patent monopoly to so strongly affect 3.65 million users of another company's product?  Does it make any policy sense to inhibit the success and invention of one company by enforcing an injunction on use of another company's patent for a small component of the other comapny's product?  Why doesn't the patent system allow for more compulsory licensing, or contain something akin to copyright's fair use provisions?  Especially given the rapid change of today's technology, perhaps the total monopoly granted by the patent system should be reconsidered.  I bet the 3.65 million BlackBerry users would want to look for a better solution than a blank screen.