NTP Sues Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that following in the wake of their patent suit against Research in Motion (RIM), NTP has filed suit against Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile for infringing on several patents. All of the patents in question relate to the delivery of email on mobile devices. "Five of the eight patents being used in the telco cases were the subject of NTP's 2001 patent suit against Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry. In November 2002, a jury found that RIM infringed upon NTP's patents. The case continued to make headlines until 2006, when RIM agreed to pay NTP a settlement of $612.5 million, nearly four years after RIM had first been found guilty of infringing on NTP's patents."

Comments

NTP request a speedy judgement, your honor

[ackthpt]

Because the BPAI may toss our patents any time and then we'll have to run though court processes to try to reassert ownership of some of these dubious patents.

I find the concept of leveraging open ideas, such as email, through some specific processes, abominable. It's not like these bastards invented email. So if I patent delivering a letter to someone's house by means of walking to my car, unlocking it, sitting in the driver seat, closing the door, putting on my safety belt, placing the key in the ignition, putting the car in gear, driving to the destination, reversing the previous steps, delivering the letter than repeating the whole previous process in reverse to return to home base and making note it has been delivered, I can sue anyone who does likewise. That's just stupid, but that's what's happening. Isn't it?

Re:NTP request a speedy judgement, your honor

[Iam9376]

Do some companies just exist explicitly to patent troll?

I wonder if this was filed in the 'great state' Texas! //sarcasm

Re:NTP request a speedy judgement, your honor

[icepick72]

You actually reversed the process twice in your claim meaning you ended up delivering the letter to yourself after a long drive and finally parked at the destination the letter should have gone to, but hey if it's patentable then who am I to judge your process.

Re:NTP request a speedy judgement, your honor

[Marty200]

Yes, NTP is a "patent holding company" which exists only to sue legitimate companies for infringing on patents.

The problem isn't with "patent holding companies" but more with the patents they are given. It's perfectly legitimate for a company to buy someone else's IP and then go after companies that haven't licensed it from them. The original patten holder may not have had the cash or the willingness to market their patent. And if a small company holds a patent on something it's difficult for them to fight a company that is using there technology if they don't have deep enough pockets.

So why not sell it off to someone that can do something with it.

Now I'm not saying that this is what NTP is doing, but that is how the process should be working.

Whoops...

[WebHostingGuy]

NTP might have had a hold over RIM because their business was depending on continued service, but NTP just picked a fight with multi-billion dollar businesses who are not going to roll over. This is just like SCO picking on IBM. When you fight a well funded opponent you better make damn sure you got the goods because their *multiple* law firms will eat your lunch.

Re:Whoops...

[ScrewMaster]

It's potentially different in another aspect. IBM was not just trying to win the case against SCO: they could have done that any number of times. What they were trying to was make an example of SCO, crushing them slowly and draining all the legal juice out, setting sufficient precedent that no-one in their right minds would ever do anything like that again. I don't see another SCO happening for a long, long time.

I wouldn't mind seeing someone take the same road with NTP. IBM's executives correctly understood that appeasement rarely works. If you have the resources, winning a head-on battle is better in the long run than a buy-off, because you won't be a target when it's over.

Re:Sigh.

[darkmeridian]

NTP actually created a product in the eighties that embodied push e-mail. As you can imagine from the time period, it was not very marketable. You're right they didn't market a modern product, however. In other words, they weren't competing head-to-head with RIM, and this really bothers people.

I think that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. RIM had been walking around suing companies for having a miniature keyboard on their mobile devices. If you believe NTP, it was this blatant patent trolling that led NTP to file its own suit. (How would NTP explain this one?) Furthermore, RIM refused to settle for $10 million, and its courtroom behavior was horribly bad. However, once it was obvious that NTP could get injunctive relief and shut down all Blackberry service in the United States, RIM had no leverage at all and had to pay an extortionate amount to settle before they went bankrupt.

Re:No - RIM deserved to lose $600 Million.

[aaarrrgggh]

...but the settlement let them get a share of any future lawsuit revenue. So... now if they get money out of the telcos, RIMM makes more money with no additional effort.

details, details

[CheeseTroll]

AFAIK, most devices that aren't Blackberries or Good Tech devices *pull* their email, rather than having the messages pushed to them from the server. A small, but important difference.

And just for extra semantic fun, just how mobile does a device need to be to qualify as "mobile"? Does a laptop running Thunderbird violate NTP's patent if you unplug it?

Re:So what are they claiming?

[Russ Nelson]

As far as I can tell, they've patented the idea of running an SMTP server on a mobile device, along with a minimal MTA that delivers the email into a mailbox, along with a MUA that immediately detects the presence of the email. It's another one of those patents where the obvious answer to a subtle question is somehow patentable. If you ask me, only the subtle answers should be patentable.