Follow-Ups
An update on companies and trends featured in recent issues

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Virginia Business
March 2006

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a petition by Research In Motion Ltd. to review a legal dispute between the Waterloo, Ontario-based maker of BlackBerry e-mail devices and Arlington-based NTP Inc., a patent holding company. RIM wanted the court to determine if U.S. patent laws extend beyond its borders. NTP sued RIM in 2001 alleging that the BlackBerry infringes on the Virginia’ company’s patents. Virginia Business reviewed the long dispute between the companies in its September 2005 issue.

The meal-assembly concept is spreading in Virginia. Let’s Dish! Northern Virginia will open its second Loudoun County store this spring in Leesburg. The first Let’s Dish! store in the region opened in August. The company also has plans for stores in Alexandria and Fairfax. A similar company, My Girlfriend’s Kitchen, has opened two stores in the Richmond area. The owners of the Richmond franchise, Danessa Knaupp and Lynne Laube, were featured in Feburary’s issue.

Two Virginia schools and one in Washington, D.C., received high rankings in the 2006 international list of business schools compiled by the Financial Times. The Darden School at the University of Virginia came in at 24th, Georgetown University’s McDonough School ranked 36th and the Mason School of Business at The College of William & Mary placed 51st. The rankings put the schools in the top 10 percent of all accredited MBA schools. Mason moved up from last year’s ranking of 73rd and was one of four U.S. schools of business that moved up more than 20 places. William & Mary recently renamed its business school after alumnus Raymond A. “Chip” Mason, president and CEO of Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc., an item noted in the January issue.

Call it a war of customer service. Another Northern Virginia bank has extended weekday hours until 8 p.m. First Horizon, with 17 branches in the Washington, D. C., metropolitan area, is the second bank in the area — after Commerce Bancorp — to extend hours Monday through Friday. And First Horizon will offer same-day processing on transactions until 8 p.m. as well. A story about Commerce appeared in the Febuary issue and detailed its strategy of competing on service rather than price.