Apple, Google, Microsoft and others have something in common; a lawsuit from NTP

You may have heard of NTP Inc. before because they were the recipients of a hefty $600 million plus settlement from RIM in 2006. You may also recall that there was a real threat that the BlackBerry service would be shut down because of this case. It seems that NTP Inc. is in need of some more compensation and has filed a suit against Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, Motorola, and LG Electronics claiming infringement of the same patents that were brought up against RIM. The lawsuits were just filed Thursday so none of the companies has any official statements yet, but we may see something next week in response.

The US Patent Office threw out seven of the 10 claims NTP Inc. brought up against RIM, but three were deemed valid. We don't know the details of these three, but NTP obviously feels that these companies are infringing upon them without giving credit or compensation to them. They are all related to wireless email technologies and this Wikipedia page has a list of several of the patents that were brought up in 2006 against RIM. These companies should take a good look at the way RIM handled the suit back in 2006 and try to apply some lessons learned in responding to NTP as well.

Don Stout, a founder of NTP, stated, ""Now we have to move forward. We hope we can resolve these cases without having to go to trial." Of course they do, this way they can secure millions without having to pay all the lawyer fees for several trials. BTW, NTP sued the four major US wireless carriers in 2006 and 2007, but these lawsuits were never settled or went to trial.

You won't see Nokia in the list because they have licensed the technology from NTP Inc. and that seems to be where all of these other companies skipped a step.