Palm Faces E-Mail Patent DisputePalm Faces E-Mail Patent Dispute

Palm, the No. 2 maker of smartphones in the United States, finds itself in the same legal tangle that rival Research In Motion bought its way out of several months ago. For Palm customers, that means worrying about the future of their Treo smartphones, just as RIM's BlackBerry users worried about the courts pulling the virtual plug on their precious devices.

Only months since receiving a $612.5 million settlement from RIM, NTP is seeking an injunction against Palm and monetary relief. NTP filed suit last week, claiming Palm's products infringe on seven of its patents related to the transmission of wireless E-mail. NTP made the same claims against RIM.

Palm says NTP's patents are of "doubtful validity," and they don't relate to its products. "The NTP patents disclose a pager-based E-mail service that has nothing in common with the mobile-computing devices invented by Palm," the company said in a statement. In preliminary re-examinations, which were started while the RIM dispute was going on, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected NTP's seven patents, but that ruling is under appeal.

Palm users don't need to panic. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that trial courts shouldn't automatically impose injunctions in patent- infringements cases. "Times have changed," says John Rabena, an intellectual property lawyer with Sughrue Mion. "Palm doesn't face a threat of a definite injunction like RIM did."