NTP takes aim at Palm

Remember when NTP sued the crap out of Blackberry for patent infringement? Well now that they’re done with BB, they’ve moved onto next on their hit-list, Palm. According to the Associated Press, “The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that Palm’s products, services, systems and processes have improperly used NTP’s wireless e-mail technology.”

Back in March, NTP successfully sued Research In Motion, recovering $612.5 million in “damages.” I put that in quotes because NTP is a patent holding company, meaning they probably have no intentions of ever making Palm products. Such a suit on Palm could mean the end for them seeing as their market capitalization is only twice that amount at $1.55 billion.

Isn’t it ridiculous that NTP can wait such a long time to protect their patents and get away with it? Both Palm and RIM have been “infringing” these patents for years, but they kept hush-hush until they could really cause some damage. This whole fiasco is really exploiting some huge flaws in the current U.S. patenting system. Can you work on that USPTO?

Read [Yahoo News]