By Michael Kanellos, 7 November 2006 08:20
NEWS
NTP, the company behind the epic patent infringement lawsuit against BlackBerry maker RIM, is now going after Palm.
In a lawsuit filed in District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday, NTP asserted that Palm's products, services, systems and processes infringe on NTP's patents.
NTP is claiming Palm infringes on seven of its patents, five of which it successfully proved RIM had violated. Palm's line of Treo smart phones, the Palm VII, Palm i700 and Palm Tungsten and their associated software applications and services, are each named as infringing on NTP's patents, according to the complaint.
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The Palm smart phones and PDAs named above can send and receive email by way of radio frequency to mobile processors, capabilities that NTP has patented, according to the complaint. Because Good Technology, RIM and Visto have licensed the same patents, so should Palm, the complaint argues. NTP also lists Nokia as a licence-holder, though that company is not mentioned in the complaint.
NTP is looking for an injunction on the sale of Palm products that allegedly violate its patents, as well as monetary damages - although it has not specified the amount of damages it is seeking.
An NTP spokesperson said it had no comment beyond its press release. A Palm representative said the company had no immediate comment. Palm shares fell 7.59 per cent on Monday, or $1.17, to trade at $14.24.
CNET News.com's Erica Ogg contributed to this report
Michael Kanellos writes for CNET News.com
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Norman Emailer
NTP is out of control. Are their patents so broad that noone is allowed to offer email services via wireless? The government should revoke these NTP patents as anti-competitive immediately!
2. Simon
"... can send and receive email by way of radio frequency to mobile processors ..."
Apart from being rather obvious, I'm sure we can find prior art for something as basic as that !
No doubt that actual patent claims are so drawn out and convoluted that the original patent clerk couldn't understand what the hell it was saying !
3. anonymous
Ridiculous!
Sending messages by way of radio is in the GSM spec.
And it has been around since Marconi invented radio and radio telegraphy.
Wasn't the first transatlantic radio communication the letter 'S' in Morse Code?
Just proves, once again, that the USA patent office will grant patents for *anything* - regardless of whether it already exists - to any company with bags of money...
4. Kirsten
NTP - talk about a cashgrabbing opportunistic company. They should be slapped with a lawsuit for being a nuisance.