Slashdot Mirror
NTP Sues Palm, Alleging Patent Violation
mikesd81 writes "The Seattle Time reports that NTP is now going after Palm for patent infringement on technology used in their devices. The suit asks the court to bar Palm from continuing to infringe on NTP's patents and seeks monetary damages for the alleged past infringements. At issues are eleven patents, dating from 1995 to 2001, according to the lawsuit. Five of the patents were part of NTP's lawsuit against RIM. The Palm complaint also centers on products, services and systems that integrate e-mail systems with wireless communications, including the Treo, Palm VII, Palm i700 and Tungsten products." You may recall NTP from the just-finished Blackberry case. Good to know they're staying busy.
.... you have to make money somehow. Seems NTP's choice is to extort money using the court system.
The NTP lawsuit claims that certain Palm products infringe seven NTP patents. All seven of the patents asserted are being re-examined by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and have been rejected by the re-examiners as invalid. Palm also noted that the NTP patents disclose a pager-based email service that has nothing in common with the mobile-computing devices invented by Palm. Palm has been in occasional contact with NTP concerning a license to these patents. When Palm last communicated with NTP many months ago, however, each of the patents already was the subject of re-examination proceedings by the PTO. Palm is disappointed that, after many months of silence and repeated rejections of NTP's claims by the PTO, NTP has chosen to sue on patents of doubtful validity. Palm respects legitimate intellectual property rights, but will defend itself vigorously against the attempted misuse of the patent and judicial systems to extract monetary value for rights to patents that may ultimately have no value at all.
RIM is a Canadian company, and that didn't work for them.
Even if your offices are out of the US, US courts still have the jurisdiction to shut down your operations in the US.
:(){
To expand on what others have already said:
NTP is a classic example of a patent troll. They purchase patents from other companies and then sue people for violations of those patents, and try to get people to pay them protection money ("license fees") to leave them alone. At no point do they produce or use anything, so they are completely exempt from "defensive" patents - nobody can countersue NTP for patent violations because NTP do nothing that could violate any patents. Similarly, license clauses that attempt to block people from suing for patent violations are ineffective against them.
Companies like this are a good example of why both "defensive" patents and those license clauses are a total waste of time, accomplishing nothing other than to create new problems.