NTP Strikes Again: Accuses Top Wireless Carriers of Infringement
The top four U.S. wireless carriers just got more patent infringement lawsuits to worry about. NTP filed four separate complaints in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, suing AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless on allegations of infringing eight patents related to radio-frequency transfer of e-mail to mobile devices. NTP wants damages, an injunction and attorney’s fees. Last year, patent-savvy NTP won a $612.5 million settlement with BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion over five of the same patents, but a Patent & Trademark Office reexamination of NTP patents could influence the new cases.
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The big four didn’t have much to say. “We have it and we're reviewing it,” an AT&T spokesman said. A Sprint Nextel spokesman said essentially the same. Verizon and T-Mobile declined to comment.
NTP’s case could be hurt by recent Supreme Court and U.S. Patent & Trademark Office developments. In its eBay ruling, the Supreme Court said there’s no “general rule” in favor of injunctions in patent cases. And PTO is reexamining NTP patents after expressing strong doubts about their validity. That PTO action prompted a March 22 stay from the same Virginia court of a separate NTP dispute against Palm over seven of the same patents. The carriers will probably try to get a court stay in their cases, said Stifel Nicolaus’s Rebecca Arbogast. Palm’s success in winning one is “encouraging,” but there’s no requirement to stay a lawsuit because of a PTO review, she said.
The carriers’ cases may also be helped by recent pubic backlash against companies that sue based on weak patents, Arbogast said. The court could have “greater sensitivity” to such unfair practices than it did in the RIM case, she said. NTP has taken fire from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on “patent trolling” because it owns patents it doesn’t use commercially (CD Nov 8/06 p5). But the patents in this, the Palm and RIM cases previously were used commercially by a company called Telefind. The e-mail technology’s founders, fearing Telefind’s demise, formed NTP in the 1990s to secure their intellectual property.
The carriers “knowingly” infringe NTP’s patents, NTP alleged. Since 1999, NTP attorneys have sent letters to Sprint, AT&T and Verizon telling them to license NTP patents, it said. AT&T and Verizon have “direct knowledge from press reports and independent investigation” about NTP’s litigation against RIM. Sprint, AT&T and Verizon know that the NTP patents are “presumed valid and remain enforceable” during the Patent and Trademark Office’s reexamination. And all four carriers are aware that “several” of their device manufacturers, including Nokia and Good Technology, have licensed NTP’s patents, it said.
Verizon makes, sells and imports products and services that “directly infringe” the patents, one complaint said. That includes “its line of handheld devices… that are capable of sending and receiving e-mail messages, and its wireless service that utilizes a RF information transmission network to provide service for products manufactured by other entities,” NTP said in the complaint. Verizon “indirectly infringes” NTP’s patents by “inducing others” to make, use, sell or import “products, methods, processes, services and/or systems” that directly infringe the patents. The claim covers Verizon’s sales of the Palm Treo and Motorola Q Black on its Web site, for example, the complaint said.
Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile sell, market and distribute infringing devices, software and services, NTP said. The carriers’ online and telephone customer care centers also “knowingly” support infringing use of products and services, it said.