NTP Sics Patent Lawyers On Smartphone Giants
NTP filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia against Google, Apple, HTC, Microsoft, LG and Motorola for violating eight of NTP's wireless e-mail delivery patents, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
"Use of NTP's intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair to NTP and its licensees," NTP co-founder Donald E. Stout said in a statement. "The filing of suit today is necessary to ensure that those companies who are infringing NTP's patents will be required to pay a licensing fee."
The wireless portion of NTP's patent portfolio comes from the work of late inventor Tom Campana, who's been called a pioneer in the area of push e-mail. His patents for wireless e-mail delivery are the ones RIM fell afoul of earlier this decade. After a protracted legal battle, RIM ended up paying a $612 million settlement to stave off a court-ordered shutdown of the Blackberry service.
NTP is no ordinary patent troll: Its wireless e-mails have already stood up to a re-examination from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) after the NTP case settlement. This time around, NTP is going after companies with much deeper pockets. If NTP wins this particular battle, it could literally rake in billions in settlement dollars.
There's a good chance HTC may choose to settle its case, if its April settlement with Microsoft over shadowy Linux patents in Android is any indication. HTC is growing quickly now and can ill afford to dedicate the kind of legal resources necessary to fight NTP's claims.
It could take years to settle this case, and certainly, all the companies named in NTP's new lawsuit had to have seen this coming. But many of the other companies have deep legal teams, and you'd have to think that Microsoft and Apple are going to be especially willing to fight NTP with everything they've got.