NTP awakes, sues Apple, Microsoft, Google, HTC, LG, and Motorola over wireless email patents
By Nilay Patel 
posted July 9th 2010 9:53AM
posted July 9th 2010 9:53AM
NTP Sues Apple, Google, HTC, LG, Microsoft and Motorola for Infringement of Wireless Email Patents
RICHMOND, Va., July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- NTP Incorporated, the company founded by Tom Campana, the inventor of wireless email, yesterday filed lawsuits against Apple, Inc., Google Inc., HTC Corp., LG Electronics Inc., Microsoft Corporation, and Motorola, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for infringing NTP's eight patents related to the delivery of electronic mail over wireless communications systems. Each of the defendants is a manufacturer or developer of either wireless handheld devices or software applications used in the delivery of email across wireless communications systems.
Donald E. Stout, NTP's co-founder, 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."
NTP is best known for its long litigation and eventual settlement with Research in Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry® wireless devices. In that litigation, all the claims asserted at trial were found to be valid and willfully infringed by RIM, and the verdict was ultimately affirmed on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Spurred by that litigation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) moved to re-examine NTP's patents. In December 2009, in spite of the massive effort by the USPTO to overturn NTP's patents, the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals (USPTO Board) ruled that 67 of NTP's patent claims in four patents are valid, including three claims that RIM was found to have infringed. Infringement of a single claim is all that is needed for a patent to be deemed violated.
NTP has also filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn the USPTO's remaining rejections of NTP's patent claims.
"The filing of suit today is necessary to ensure that those companies who are infringing NTP's patents will be required to pay a licensing fee," Mr. Stout continued. "In view of the USPTO Board's ruling, the debate over whether Mr. Campana was an originator in the field of wireless email is over. No patents in U.S. history have received as much scrutiny as NTP's patents. We are delighted that the USPTO Board has recognized the groundbreaking innovation of Mr. Campana by confirming 67 of NTP's patent claims. We are also confident that the USPTO's rejections, which are on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, will be overturned."
About NTP Incorporated
NTP Incorporated is a privately-held intellectual property firm based in Richmond, Virginia that was founded in 1992 by the late inventor Thomas Campana, Jr. and his partners. NTP's intellectual property includes patents relating to technologies involving wireless email which Mr. Campana developed as lead inventor in 1990. Mr. Campana was awarded over 50 patents in his career and invented a wireless location technology that helps parents find their children which received first prize at the 1996 Consumer Electronics Show. NTP has licensing agreements with Research in Motion Limited, Good Technology, Inc., Nokia Inc., and Visto Corporation.
RICHMOND, Va., July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- NTP Incorporated, the company founded by Tom Campana, the inventor of wireless email, yesterday filed lawsuits against Apple, Inc., Google Inc., HTC Corp., LG Electronics Inc., Microsoft Corporation, and Motorola, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for infringing NTP's eight patents related to the delivery of electronic mail over wireless communications systems. Each of the defendants is a manufacturer or developer of either wireless handheld devices or software applications used in the delivery of email across wireless communications systems.
Donald E. Stout, NTP's co-founder, 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."
NTP is best known for its long litigation and eventual settlement with Research in Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry® wireless devices. In that litigation, all the claims asserted at trial were found to be valid and willfully infringed by RIM, and the verdict was ultimately affirmed on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Spurred by that litigation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) moved to re-examine NTP's patents. In December 2009, in spite of the massive effort by the USPTO to overturn NTP's patents, the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals (USPTO Board) ruled that 67 of NTP's patent claims in four patents are valid, including three claims that RIM was found to have infringed. Infringement of a single claim is all that is needed for a patent to be deemed violated.
NTP has also filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn the USPTO's remaining rejections of NTP's patent claims.
"The filing of suit today is necessary to ensure that those companies who are infringing NTP's patents will be required to pay a licensing fee," Mr. Stout continued. "In view of the USPTO Board's ruling, the debate over whether Mr. Campana was an originator in the field of wireless email is over. No patents in U.S. history have received as much scrutiny as NTP's patents. We are delighted that the USPTO Board has recognized the groundbreaking innovation of Mr. Campana by confirming 67 of NTP's patent claims. We are also confident that the USPTO's rejections, which are on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, will be overturned."
About NTP Incorporated
NTP Incorporated is a privately-held intellectual property firm based in Richmond, Virginia that was founded in 1992 by the late inventor Thomas Campana, Jr. and his partners. NTP's intellectual property includes patents relating to technologies involving wireless email which Mr. Campana developed as lead inventor in 1990. Mr. Campana was awarded over 50 patents in his career and invented a wireless location technology that helps parents find their children which received first prize at the 1996 Consumer Electronics Show. NTP has licensing agreements with Research in Motion Limited, Good Technology, Inc., Nokia Inc., and Visto Corporation.
Are they having a laff?
Lawyers need better things to do.
Just tell google to but that little* company.
@rkmac those companies are like titans.
@rkmac
Is this how little sh1ts make it these days? $ue larger companies?
@rkmac
Hell is about to freeze over
@Failbait
If the larger companies steal your work that is patented, then yes.
@OjSimpson
RIM got screwed as it was under threat of having its product sales blocked in the USA and that was seriously reducing its stock price. Will be interesting to see whether the USPTO treats the US companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Moto) with the same sort of threat.
@rkmac
I use email.. they should sue me too
@rkmac
They have a right to sue and if they have a valid case and should win then kudos for them.
Apple, Google, and the rest should pay if they violated the law. No one is above the law.
"party down in lawsuit town"?? Really?
what a fucking nerd
@BrookLynnsFinest you do know that, what you say means, you can get sued for using email on an iphone, android, or windows mobile devices now?
think about it, you say they have the rigth, so they would also have the right to sue everyone using the said technology without there permission.
or did you not think that one out?
@rkmac
bunch of vultures...
@huskie fluff
This is false. Patent law only pertains to the company that is producing and profiting from an infringing product. If it were allowable to sue any user of an infringing product, then consumers would have to spend a lot more time studying patents to make sure that a product they want will not infringe (which is ridiculous).
@rkmac Lawyers have better things to do than making lots of money? What world do you live in?
@BMills There is no proof that anyone (from this group) stole anything. Other than perhaps the idea. Which is no longer considered protectable by patents anymore than it is by copyright.
@Canucker
Agreed, precedent set, first company to settle wins.
@ruby
Wow what a stupid high rated comment. You use email so they should sue you too? You do realize suing over patents is because a COMPANY USES IT FOR PROFIT OR IN THEIR PRODUCT right? You can't sue a normal joe for just using it.
@rkmac
"the inventor of wireless email."
Wait , What?!
Email is a standard of protocols (example SMTP) that use TCP/IP infrastructure, so any client (wire or wireless) that have access to that network infrastructure (read the internet) can use the email in same way regardless how the bits is transmitted as that is layer 1 of network communication and email is layer 7.
So what wireless email mean?!
@rkmac Omg if they beat Apple, itll be such a HUGE settlement, Steve Jobs wont have the money for his daily liver transplants!!! I'm so excited!!!
@ruby Do you directly profit from it?
@rkmac This is ALL this company does.
NTP is just a bunch of lawyers who couldn't think of anything to make themselves so they go and patent anything they can find that others forgot to patent, then sit and wait quietly as that 'idea' evolves and becomes very valuable before they sue and make their big pay day.
Hopefully this proves to be as interesting as it sounds, especially with all those big names included. You'd think these companies would do patent checks before releasing products, but i guess not, haha.
@bahoo Not to mention NTP has a 600 Million Dollar war chest. If they get half of that from each company, it could gain 1.8 Billion.. in cash. I need to get inventing.
@bahoo NTP is going to have problem especially with the Big Three: Microsoft, Apple, and Google. I wonder just how many patents those companies have against NTP.
@Steve Jobs Clone Google doesn't need patents. It can just block its services to NTP until they relent. That would be an amazing legal strategy.
Lol
@Icerpro http://dontlol.calcaria.net
@PaulMdx *chuckle
@PaulMdx lel
@Lucas http://dontlol.calcaria.net/ !!!
It's "X-men 2: United" all over again
Even with bigger names, all other things being equal, doesn't the success of their last lawsuit really make their case stronger? I think some might want to settle on this one.
@juanvaldez I guess I can't be more than half right already, seeing as how they settled the last case, but some of their patents were upheld, so unless the defendants can show different means of implementation or argue their case better, they might just be prolonging the inevitable.
Me wonders if Apple and HTC/Google can play nice on this one...
@juanvaldez everyone plays nice when they risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
@juanvaldez
Not when a bunch of their patents were subsequently overturned. RIM's back was against the wall and they settled for business reasons. Can't see three of the largest US companies agreeing to settle unless it’s a token amount (to allow NTP to save face and not be counter-sued by its licensees - e.g. RIM).
The image in my mind: 1 clown fish vs. a school of sharks
@Hraefn
I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food.
@Podaman Rofl
@SilentStryk09 - lol win!
@Hraefn
Isn't that part of the plot line of Finding Nemo?
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth Yessir Buzzkillington
Going after Apple, Microsoft and Google at the same time? Now there's balls.
@Greg
should of thrown cisco in there and they would have the Big 4
Party down in lawsuit town? Is that like a club in Manhattan or something? Because their jobs are set for the next n years right!
612 Mils didn't last long..
@KGBSmurf
Hookers and blow will do that
Down with software patents!
@Graham J For real.
@Graham J
Agreed.
PATENT TROLL RAWR