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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."
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?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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