Smartphone Lawsuit !

Ever heard about NTP? It’s a patent holding company best known for prying a settlement of more than $600 million from the maker of BlackBerry.

What about Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola? Kidding.

NTP is now suing these big shots! These suits which were filed in a federal court in Richmond charge that the cell phone email systems of these companies are illegally using NTP's patented technology.

The round of litigation against leaders in the smartphone hardware and software market is the latest step by NTP to assert that its intellectual property is the foundation of modern wireless e-mail systems and that major corporations are infringing with impunity. Its critics have said that NTP has consistently inflated the importance of its innovations and that it is the very model of a patent troll, a company that produces no product or service other than licensing demands and lawsuits.

Legal experts say that the potential payday for NTP in the current litigation could be as much as several hundred million dollars but it is uncertain. It could also be far less because technology and product designs change quickly and recent smartphone e-mail systems may well have been designed with an eye towards avoiding NTP's patents.

The companies named as defendants in the suits declined to comment. But whatever the outcome in the latest suits, NTP has already altered the patent economy.