Tuesday, March 7, 2006

Life after RIM?

What would you do with $612.5 million? If you're NTP, first you have to pay your lawyers for grinding out a settlement in the five-year patent dispute with Research In Motion over the BlackBerry mobile email device. Once that's done, the patent-holding company founded by Don Stout and the late Tom Campana will be sitting on a sizable war chest that could come in handy as it attempts to appeal its recent defeats at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and looks over the rest of the wireless email market. After that, there's a chance NTP will use its hefty arsenal <A HREF="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-6046573.html?tag=zdnn.alert">to go after other companies.</A> The most prominent name bandied about on "who's next for NTP" lists is the tech industry's wealthiest company, Microsoft--though such a lawsuit seems a bit farfetched to tech analysts and legal experts. But speculating about new lawsuit targets could be a moot point if NTP doesn't hold on to its patents.

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