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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.'"
Wasn't NTP's key patent ruled invalid, but the judge made RIM pay anyways?
And it seems to me that the "email + wireless" patent would be invalid under KSR v. Teleflex
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
There were plenty of amateur radio operators (myself included) using the KA9Q stack to implement e-mail over radio in the late 80s.
As is so frequently the case, though, I haven't been able (yet) to find the details of the patents at issue here. Although possibly they are the same as the ones at issue in the RIM case (the PR blurb from NTP seems to indicate that that's a possibility, but isn't explicit). In any case, without the actual patents (indeed, without the detailed claims from the complaint), it's hard to know whether the action is even, as the lawyers say, colorable.