NTP, a patent holding company based in Arlington, Va., is suing Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA for infringing several of its patents, all of which are related to the delivery of e-mail to mobile devices. You might remember that NTP wrung $612.5 million out of Research in Motion for doing so.
In its new round of suits, NTP claims mobile carriers mobile email services also violate those patents.
NTP wants an injunction to stop the infringing actions. Injunction. As in "you will stop delivering email now and then we will go to court to figure out whether you really are infringing or not. Injunction. As in massive North American email outage.
Five of the eight patents NTP claims are being infringed were the subject of NTP's 2001 patent suit against Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry. In November 2002, a jury found that RIM infringed upon NTP's patents.
In 2006 RIM agreed to pay NTP to settle the case.
