NTP, Inc. is a Virginia-based patent holding company founded in 1992 by the late inventor Thomas J. Campana Jr. and Donald E. Stout.
About half of the US patents were originally assigned to Telefind Corporation, a Florida-based company (now out of business) partly owned by Campana.
On November 6, 2006, NTP announced that it had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Palm, Inc. in response to the breakdown in licensing talks.
[6] However, on March 22, 2007, United States District Court Judge James R. Spencer (Eastern Division of Virginia, Richmond Division) granted a stay of proceedings in the NTP's lawsuit against Palm, Inc. Judge Spencer also granted Palm's motion to strike from the complaint NTP's allegation of wrongdoing at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
[7] In September 2007, NTP filed patent infringement lawsuits against several large telecommunications companies including AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.
[12] During the trial, RIM tried to show that a functional wireless email system was already in the public domain at the time the NTP inventions had been made.
In early November 2005 the US Department of Justice filed a brief requesting that RIM's service be allowed to continue because of the large number of BlackBerry users in the US Federal Government.
The previously granted injunction preventing all RIM sales in the US and use of the BlackBerry device might have been enforced by the presiding district court judge had the two parties not been able to reach a settlement.
[15] On February 9, 2006, the US Department of Defense (DOD) filed a brief stating that an injunction shutting down the BlackBerry service while excluding government users was unworkable.
On February 9, 2006, RIM announced that it had developed software workarounds that would not infringe the NTP patents, and would implement those if the injunction was enforced.
A key issue is whether certain documents found in a Norwegian library should be considered "publications" and would therefore anticipate the claims of the patents.
The CAFC agreed that the Telenor documents were a valid reference, but that the USPTO had given the phrase "electronic email [message]" an overly broad interpretation in its rejection of the claims.
[26] NTP announced on July 23, 2012, that it has settled patent suits with AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp., T-Mobile USA, Apple Inc., HTC Corp., Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (now part of Google Inc.), Palm Inc. (now part of Hewlett-Packard Co.), LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Yahoo Inc.