RSSPalm Wins Stay of Suit By NTP
By Ed Oswald | Published March 23, 2007, 11:30 AM
A federal judge handed Palm a victory on Thursday, saying that the company could continue to sell phones including technology that has caused them to be sued by patent-holding company NTP.
NTP is no stranger to patent litigation -- the company most recently successfully settled a$612.5 million with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. The suit against Palm is similar to that case.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Judge James Spencer, who also oversaw the NTP-RIM battle, said in a ruling that Palm would be able to sell the Palm VII, Palm i700 and Palm Tungsten, and the Treo line, until the USPTO rules whether they infringe on NTP's patents.
He also ruled that a portion of the suit by NTP that alleges misconduct by the Patent Office would be dropped from the case.
Furthermore, any additional action has been put on hold while the USPTO rules on the validity of patents held by NTP. Those who followed the case against RIM may remember that the settlement came before a final judgement on the validity of NTP's claims.
Palm said it was pleased with Spencer's ruling. "We hope and expect that the PTO's review of NTP's patents will confirm the decision of the examiners to reject them all and so avert the need for further litigation of this matter," general counsel Mary Doyle said.
NTP has not specified whether it plans to appeal. "The ongoing reexamination by the (PTO) is one step in a process that could end in the federal court system, including the Court of Appeals, which previously upheld NTP's patents," it said in a statement to the press.
There is prior art on most patents claimed by NTP.
Visto has also sued Palm based on wireless email patents. And on these I happen to know where the prior art is. NTP patents were on push email by radio
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|You know, we really do need tort reform. Not to keep the little people from suing the corporations, but rather to keep non-productive, non-innovating scumbag companies from suing other companies. Perhaps the best example, even worse than NTP, is Verizon, who ignored their customers needs, shoved bad service at high prices at them, and is now suing because another company offered better service at a better price. Can't actually compete in the open market??? No problem, just sue someone!
My policy from now on, any company that that files a frivolous lawsuit loses my business forever. Of course that won't work with leech companies like NTP. One can only hope there is a special place in hell for them.
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|I agree that tort needs serious overhauling in the U.S. but I don't agree on the view that Verizon is unfounded in their suit against Vonage. Vonage was found by a jury to be infringing on 3 of 5 patents (2 were dropped by the jury). The 3 remaining were stated by the jury to be "unintentional", but still they agreed Vonage didn't do their homework before pushing all their poker chips into the center of the table. Business is business and part of business is preparation and Vonage didn't prepare like they should have. A better example would have been RIM vs NTP but let's leave that tired subject rest in peace.
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|Patents on software seem to suffer from the lack of tools to search for prior art. It's also hard to imagine a database were inventors would be able to describe their prior art. It would help the Patent Office searching for the prior art that invalidates patents.
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|I just realized a way for the US to pull out of Iraq gracefully! Tell NTP that the insurgents are making their own Palm/Berry ripoff, called a "Blaqberry", and that they're building them into each IED. While they hand out subpoenas, we can quietly pull our troops out.
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|And what do you supposed you do once we 'pull our troops out'? Don't you think we should finish the fight first?
We have all these people saying we should 'pull our troops out', but they don't have any better answers of how we should solve this 'War on Iraq'.
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|(sarcasm dude, sarcasm - relax)
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|Grasp it... That is the better answer. Pull out the troops. Have you ever heard of Vietnam, never again? Bush/Rumsfeld, like Johnson/McNamara before them, has created a situation in which no military victory is possible, once again.
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|Yay! But on another note, isn't the Palm VII obsolete?
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|Eat it, NTP patent wh***.
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