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Enterprise Patent Protection Takes Its Share

There's an article on InformationWeek about how copyright protection contributes to a large portion of the US GDP. While a lot of it stems from protecting the copyrights of music, movies, TV shows and so on, the enterprise takes its fair share. Remember that $612 million settlement RIM paid to patent hound NTP?

First, let me say that the original version of this article contained some factual errors that the blogosphere was kind enough to point out. My initial Google searches to confirm some details apparently weren't thorough enough.

I truly wonder what the proportion of enterprise copyright protection lawsuits belong to NTP. NTP, a patent holding firm based in Virginia, has sued a handful of wireless email providers, including RIM and Palm. After a protracted court battle, RIM settled with NTP for $612.5 million. The litigation with Palm is still on-going.

A point of legal clarification here. In December 2005, Visto, another wireless email provider, licensed NTP's wireless email patents, which in turn received an equity stake in Visto. Equity = ownership, whatever the percentage may be. Since NTP has an equity stake (partial ownership) in Visto, it obviously has an interest in the success of that organization.

Visto (and, in effect, NTP) has sued RIM, Microsoft, Good Technology and Seven. Good (now part of Motorola) settled with Visto. Visto won an injunction and damages against Seven in May 2006. Litigation against RIM and Microsoft is still pending.

Nokia, which also provides wireless email services through its Intellisync product, has licensed NTP's patents.

Any way you look at it, NTP and its stake in Visto stand to make money filing lawsuits. Given the deep pockets of RIM and Microsoft, that could be a lot of money.

NTP isn't alone, though. Qualcomm seems to sue and be sued a fair amount, as well. It currently has suits pending with Broadcom, another maker of chips, and organizations in Korea, who allege unfair business practices related to Qualcomm's CDMA technology.

Then there's Apple. Ever since the runaway success of the iPod, Apple seems to be a target for patent lawsuits regarding iPod technology and other alleged infringements. The latest of which could concern LG, which says it has developed an interface for its Prada phone similar to the iPhone's.

Still. Big business generally means big lawsuits. If you ask me, the only winners in such litigation are the lawyers.

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