Palm Shares Skid on Patent Suit RIM down, NTP files a patent suit against handheld maker Palm. November 6, 2006 NTP said Monday it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Palm, alleging the handheld maker infringed on its patents for mobile devices. Palm shares dropped $1.03, or 6 percent, at $14.38 on the news. Patent-holding firm NTP filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The suit alleges that Palm products, services, systems, and processes infringe on NTP's patents. Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry, settled a patent dispute with NTP in March for $612.5 million. The settlement helped RIM narrowly escape an injunction that likely would have halted its BlackBerry service. RIM was granted access to NTP patents under the deal. The NTP suit seeks an injunction against Palm, which makes the Treo line of smart phones. The patent-holding company also seeks monetary damages related to its patent claims. The complaint targets Palm products and services and other uses of email systems with radio frequency communications to mobile processors and related methods. “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's co-founder Donald E. Stout said in a statement. William Heinze, an intellectual-property attorney, said that for Palm, the case appears as if the handheld maker may think it has a design-around to the patents in question. “Palm must have a reasonable non-infringe argument that they have a design-around that does not infringe,” Mr. Heinze said. This, too, was at issue in RIM, which was seeking an alternative method to keep its system online. “The (RIM) settlement amount seemed pretty low and that it only took into consideration past damages, but didn’t take into consideration future damages,” he said.