NTP lawsuit alleges Palm infringed e-mail patents

NTP Inc., which successfully sued the maker of BlackBerry devices for infringement of wireless e-mail patents, said Monday that it was suing Palm Inc., maker of the Treo smart phone.

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.

Palm’s shares tumbled $1.17 to $14.24, the entire 7.6% loss coming after news of the suit broke.

The suit asks the court to bar Palm from “continuing to infringe on NTP’s patents” and seeks monetary damages for the alleged past infringements.

Palm said in a statement that it was disappointed by NTP’s suit and that the patents were dubious because they were being reexamined by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

In March, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million to settle a four-year patent dispute. Although it never conceded wrongdoing, RIM acknowledged that customers had delayed placing orders because of the threat of a court-ordered shutdown of the BlackBerry system.

The Palm complaint also centers on products, services and systems that integrate e-mail systems with wireless communications, including the Treo, Palm VII, Palm i700 and Tungsten products.

At issue are seven patents, dating from 1995 to 2001, according to the lawsuit. Five of the patents were part of NTP’s lawsuit against RIM.

NTP co-founder Donald E. Stout said Monday that his company had tried to work out a licensing agreement with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm.

NTP, a privately held patent holding company based in Richmond, Va., has licensed its technology to Nokia Corp., Good Technology Inc. and Visto Corp.