Update: BlackBerry has denied that Samsung approached the company for a possible deal. That news sent BlackBerry shares tumbling 16 percent in after-hours trading. Ars has reached out to Samsung for additional confirmation and will make a second update if we hear back. Phew! What a wacky day on Wall Street!

Original report: CNBC first reported that Samsung had approached BlackBerry late Wednesday afternoon, and Reuters shortly thereafter reported that Samsung was interested in paying $7.5 billion for the Canadian company. “According to a person familiar with the matter and documents seen by Reuters,” Samsung is hoping to get its mitts on BlackBerry's valuable patent portfolio, primarily.

The news has sent BlackBerry's usually ho-hum stock price soaring, with the company up 30 percent at the time of this writing.

The South Korean company “proposed an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, which represents a premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry's current trading price,” Reuters' source told the outlet. Despite BlackBerry's inability to put forward a popular consumer smartphone in recent years, the company does own a number of key smartphone and security-related patents.

CNBC notes that Wednesday has been BlackBerry's best stock market performance in 11 years.

BlackBerry has floundered in finding a consumer audience since the company dropped the fallen-from-grace RIM brand in 2013. Recently, Ars reviewed the BlackBerry Passport, a business-oriented smartphone that performed well through 18-hour workdays but failed to capture the interest of entrenched Android and iOS users. The company even announced in December that it would be selling “BlackBerry Classic”—a phone that leans on the company's phone aesthetic that was popular in the RIM heyday.

As recently as October of last year, BlackBerry was granted 27 new patents for security features, conference calling, and even a wearable device that "could be used to grant access to a smartphone so users wouldn’t have to key in a passcode," Bloomberg reported at the time. Another patent protected the design of "a case that would have a touch screen so users could write notes on their device without opening the case."