Apparently Research In Motion has been slapped with a patent infringement which could possibly result in Research IN Motion products including BlackBerry smartphones being banned in the United States reports an article over on Bloomberg.

Patent licensing company Prism Technologies of Nebraska has files a US International Trade Commission complaint against the BlackBerry maker and claim RIM’s Blackberry Enterprise Solution and a RIM wireless authentication system violates Prism patents.

Although unlike a US court, the International Trade Commission cannot order an organisation to make a monetary recompense over patent related royalties, but can block the import of items made outside the United States.

Research In Motion is of course challenging the patent claim in the federal court of Nebraska, and apparently Microsoft was also named for patent infringement but has already settled with Prism Technologies.

If the ITC investigate further, the probe could take up to 15 months and Research In Motion could possibly be banned from selling BlackBerry goods in the US, although one would expect things to be sorted long before that happened so is probably unlikely.