Emboldened by a $612.5 million settlement from Research in Motion, a company claiming to have invented wireless e-mail, Friday sued Apple, Google, Microsoft and three other handset makers. NTP Incorporated alleges the companies are violating eight patents on wireless e-mail.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia, is aimed at getting Apple and others to pay licensing fees. In a news release, NTP said the defendants all make hardware or software to deliver e-mail via wireless communications.
“Use of NTP’s intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair to NTP and its licensees,” NTP co-founder Donald Stout said. “Unfortunately, litigation is our only means of ensuring the inventor of the fundamental technology on which wireless e-mail is based, Tom Capana, and NTP shareholders are recognized, and are fairly and reasonably compensated for their innovative work and investment,” Stout added.
Campana, NTP’s founder, claims he is “the inventor of wireless e-mail.” In 2006, NTP sued Palm and RIM over the same eight patents. RIM settled settled the matter for $612.5 million. In 2007, the company also sued carriers AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.
It’s interesting to note that one of Apple’s co-defendants in this lawsuit earlier had sued the Cupertino, Calif. company for patent infringement. HTC, a maker of several Android-based smartphones in May sued Apple, claiming five patents it owned were infringed by the iPhone maker. That lawsuit was in response to an even earlier lawsuit Apple filed against HTC, claiming the company infringed 20 patents.
