Following its successful $612.5 million lawsuit against Blackberry maker Research in Motion (News - Alert), NTP on Monday has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Palm in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

 

In a press release, the company said Palm's products, services, systems and processes infringe on its patents and is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Palm from continuing to infringe “directly and indirectly.” In addition, the complaint seeks the recovery of monetary damages resulting from Palm's past direct and indirect infringement of these patents.

 

“We have attempted – on numerous occasions – to resolve this issue with Palm without resorting to litigation that is both time consuming and costly. Despite our efforts, Palm has chosen to continue to unlawfully infringe on our patents,” NTP's co-founder Donald E. Stout said.

 

The charges are related to Palm profiting from solutions that allegedly infringe on radio frequency (RF) enabled email systems. Earlier this year, Research in Motion settled with NTP, reaching a licensing agreement in exchange for $612.5 million.

 

“Though we would still prefer to resolve this issue with Palm in a negotiated license agreement that is fair and reasonable to both parties, we are filing action today as a last resort to protect our valuable intellectual property,” NTP said.

 

Last month, Palm surprised many people by unveiling the Palm Treo 680 to complement its Treo 700w, 700p and Treo 750v smartphones, and announced it will sell the new smartphone through 20 carriers, thus increasing significantly the company’s number of international carrier relationships.

 

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.