NTP Sues Six Major Tech Companies Over Wireless Email Patents

rgraham writes "NTP, the same company that sued and eventually settled with RIM for $612.5 million over an IP dispute, has now sued Apple, Google, HTC, LG, Microsoft and Motorola for infringement of wireless email patents. In the press release, NTP co-founder Donald Stout said, 'Use of NTP's intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair to NTP and its licensees. Unfortunately, litigation is our only means of ensuring the inventor of the fundamental technology on which wireless email is based, Tom Campana, and NTP shareholders are recognized, and are fairly and reasonably compensated for their innovative work and investment. We took the necessary action to protect our intellectual property.'"

Comments

Re:Hmmm.....

[Concerned Onlooker]

They may have been penitent, but I believe the word you are looking for is pittance.

Re:Their patents are bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods, please read the back story.

Re:Hmmm.....

[Gouru]

They didn't forget. Nokia has a license from NTP so can't be included in this suit.

A Bit of History and Some Perspective

[Grond]

While it's true that NTP received a $612.5 million damages award from RIM, it's important to remember that NTP initially offered to settle with RIM for approximately $6 million. Remember too that RIM was found to have been a willful infringer, so its damages were increased and included attorney's fees. It also engaged in some courtroom shenanigans that likely contributed to the increased damages award. Another reason the eventual settlement was so high was that it was a full and final settlement (i.e., accounted for future use of the patented invention), not just a payment of damages that had already accrued. Finally, the litigation took 6 years, and in that time (2000-2006) the market for smart phones exploded, so RIM effectively racked up a lot of damages.

The point is that a lot of the large settlement was RIM's fault: it chose to fight a losing battle, it was a willful infringer, and it behaved unethically in the courtroom. It's hard to have a lot of sympathy for them.

In any event, the cost to end users was not that great. RIM has sold ~100 million BlackBerries. The cost of the settlement amounts to roughly $6 per unit, which is about a 2-5% royalty on the cost of each device. Compared to the cost of owning a smartphone (often well over $1000 per year when you factor in the voice and data plans), $6 isn't much.

Many of you may now be saying, sure 2-5% isn't much, but it adds up fast if you have to settle with multiple patent owners, each of which wants their 2-5%. That's true, and a significant litigation reform effort is building behind allowing defendants in patent infringement suits to present evidence regarding the royalty rates for patents other than the ones in suit. Right now, the jury doesn't get to hear that you have to pay royalties on X other patents for each device sold and that those royalties are typically very small (e.g., pennies per unit or .1% of the cost or somesuch), so it's common for the jury to award comparatively high royalties. There is an effort to change that to allow juries to work with a much more complete picture of how royalty structures work in the real world rather than viewing only the patents in suit in isolation.

It looks like wireless & mail one is dead alre

[dragisha]

http://news.cnet.com/Patent-office-issues-final-rejection-of-NTP-patent/2100-1047_3-6042049.html

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a final rejection of one of the five patents at issue in NTP's long-running case against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

The final rejection was posted on the Patent Office's Web site for the NTP-held patent, which covers a system for sending e-mails over a wireless network to a mobile device. The Patent Office has already issued nonfinal actions rejecting the claims in four out of the five NTP patents in question, but a final rejection is required before the appeals process can begin.

All in 2006...

Re:Their patents are bullshit

[capnchicken]

And in case the wiki somehow gets edited (never know!):

        * #6,317,592 - Omnidirectional and directional antenna assembly
        * #6,272,190 - System for wireless transmission and receiving of information and method of operation thereof
        * #6,198,783 - System for wireless serial transmission of encoded information
        * #6,067,451 - System and method of radio transmission between a radio transmitter and radio receiver
        * #5,819,172 - Electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile radios
        * #5,751,773 - System for wireless serial transmission of encoded information
        * #5,745,532 - System for wireless transmission and receiving of information and method of operation thereof
        * U.S. Patent 5,631,946 - System for transferring information from an RF receiver to a processor under control of a program stored by the processor and method of operation thereof
        * #5,625,670 - Electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processor
        * #5,438,611 - Electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processors originating from outside of the electronic mail system and method of operation thereof

Re:Fundamental technology

[Hognoxious]

My understanding was the the patent was held invalid but only after RIM settled out of court - and since that was a voluntary surrender on their part it's tough bastard titty for RIM[1]. But there have been so many of these retarded cases that I could well be confused.

[1] serves them right, the soft bastards.

Re:Fundamental technology

[Nemesisghost]

Actually looking at his wiki page, what he actually 'invented' is a way for wireless devices to have an "always on" email connection via Push Email. Unlike traditional email, in which the email client polls the server to see if there are any new messages, push email works the opposite. Since a smart phone has a steady network address, the email client can send new mail notifications directly to the phone and let the phone decide to download them or not. It was the application of this idea to wireless technology that NTP patented.

From the author: details added to post

[robp]

Thanks for the attention. One of NTP's PR folks just e-mailed a copy of the company's complaint against Google. There's a copy embedded after the jump of my post, and you can also read or download the PDF via Scribd. I encourage you all to give that document a careful read, then look through the patents claimed (I've linked to the relevant USPTO pages in the post as well).

- RP

So I'm reading the first of the patents...

[mengel]

In particular 5,436,960, and I note that something like half of the paragraphs in it, though numbered differently, all say:

the identification number is added to the originated information by matching an identification of the at least one of the plurality of destination processors with a stored identification of the at least one of the plurality of destination processors and adding an identification number stored with the matched identification of the at least one of the plurality of destination processors to the originated information as the identification number.

Which sounds like a particulary contorted way to describe a router taking the data out of a packet routed to it, and routing it to another system based on the destination address.

Then, in the Description he lies:

Electronic mail services are basically a wire line-to-wire line, point-to-point type of communications. Electronic mail, similar to facsimile transmissions, provides a one-way message. A recipient typically does not have to interact with the message. Electronic mail, unlike facsimile, is a non-real-time message transmission architecture.

Email has always had a send-to-multiple recipients functionality, and has always used store-and-forward servers over packet networks and/or instances dial-up lines. It is not "point-to-point" except rarely when sending to the same host where the mail originates.

Basically, when you realize that an Ethernet is an RF frequency network, this patent describes email being forwarded by an outgoing mail server and being routed to one or more destinations. Pretty much what SMTP over TCP/IP had been doing for over 20 years at the time this lame-o patent was filed. I can't wait to see what the other ones look like (shudder).