Smartphone Patent Suits Challenge Big Makers

NTP, a patent-holding company best known for prying a settlement of more than $600 million from the maker of the BlackBerry, is now suing the other big names in the smartphone industry: Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola.

The suits, filed late Thursday afternoon in federal district court in Richmond, Va., charge that the cellphone e-mail systems of those 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.