NTP Cranks Up Their Legal Engine

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1242130020070912">http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1242130020070912</a><br /><br /><i>"NTP Inc, which last year won a $612.5 million settlement from the maker of Blackberry, has sued four of the top U.S. mobile service providers for infringing eight patents related to wireless e-mail. The lawsuits, against Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp, T-Mobile USA and the mobile unit of AT&amp;T Inc were filed September 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to court documents."</i><br /><br />Well, I guess when you have $612,500,000 to spend and no real product to sell, you might as well invest that money with your lawyer and see if you can get a good return out of it. :roll:

[jgrnt1]

You are so cynical, Ed. I'm sure NTP has nothing but noble aspirations. They're just looking out for us, the little guys and gals. I even heard that their lawyers agreed to wave their normal fees, to insure all the money comes back to us in the form of cheaper products and services. :wink:

I'm against capital punishment, but I could make an exception for patent trolls. The patent system seems to be more and more broken every day and I don't think the new legislation is going to fix it.

[paschott]

IIR the details of this case correctly, NTP actually does work as someone to hold patents and provide some safeguarding for people who wouldn't be able to fight the larger corps on their own. I'm not saying that the patents are valid in this case (and hopefully there will be more discovery as the Patent Office was really looking into this last time and reviewing the remaining patents).

I agree in part that squatting on a patent is pretty lame - if you're not really trying to do something with it, it should be a whole lot harder to sue someone for using something on which you hold the patent. I don't particularly like what NTP is doing, but the law does give them this right. Here's hoping that the patent office invalidates the patents so they can be used by all.

Now, had NTP (or their client) been working on the tech behind these patents, that would be a different story. I'd still say it's worth looking into whether the patents are valid, but the fact that they were actively doing something would at least look a little better.

Who knows? Maybe the carriers will band together and squash this case instead of trying to fight it out separately. It will be an interesting case to watch (especially now that SCO is dead :) )

[Jason Lee]

Hate really isn't a strong enough word to describe how i feel about these people....

[mcsouth]

.....they're going to take that $612.5 million and try to make some serious money with it! :D

[Jon Westfall]

.....they're going to take that $612.5 million and try to make some serious money with it! :D

I once heard a quote from some mega rich person (forget which one) that basically imparted the knowledge that there is nothing you can do with $300 million that, as an individual, you couldn't do for $30 million (in other words, you hit a saturation point).

Obviously this doesn't apply to NTP...

[Ed Hansberry]

.....they're going to take that $612.5 million and try to make some serious money with it! :D

I once heard a quote from some mega rich person (forget which one) that basically imparted the knowledge that there is nothing you can do with $300 million that, as an individual, you couldn't do for $30 million (in other words, you hit a saturation point).

Trust me, if I had $300M vs $30M, my jet would be MUCH larger.

[virain]

And while NTP and mobile carriers will rip each other throats in court, MS would quietly rip benefits by promoting MS Exchange, :devilboy: It must be nice, after all those countless law suites for patent violations just to kick back and watch the show 0X