Just as Good technology, a push e-mail solution provider competing with RIM, was gloating about how customers could flock to them if in fact the NTP lawsuit forces a Blacbkerry shutdown, they too have now gotten a taste of bad patent medicine:
Visto Corporation, a leading global provider of secure push email services, announced today that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Good Technology in a suit which alleges that Good’s products and services infringe on multiple patents held by Visto, was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.
Great, so now the backup plan for most Blackberry addicts is also at risk.
So uhh, what’s next? Windows Mobile devices then? Not if Visto has a say: they’re suing Microsoft for patent infringement, too.
Interestingly, it’s been noted that Visto has licensed quite a bit of technology from our good ol’ friends at NTP. This leaves them with the only current push e-mail soluion that hasn’t been directly challenged for patent infrigement… in fact, NTP stands to get nice royalties from Visto, considering that as part of the agreement, NTP has a direct equity stake in the company.
And with the ink barely dry on that agreement, Visto filed a brief with the US District court in Virgina, asserting that in the event of a Blackberry service shutdown, Visto alone could “quickly absorb all U.S. BlackBerry users.”
Could they both be in cahoots to corner the push e-mail market? While NTP’s corporate structure consists entirely of lawyers whose job appears to be to find potential infrigement and sue away, Visto has a working push e-mail solution, of which royalties get funneled to NTP coffers and is pretty much the only solution that isn’t getting sued.
Nah, there can’t be any collusion there!