NTP is back in the news today, however, believe it or not, it isn’t because they are suing someone over patent infringement. This time the shoe is on the other foot as NTP is the defendant in a patent infringement case.
Oren Tavory, a 43 year old software developer living in West Palm Beach, FL. filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va. requesting that a judge issue a court order naming him as co-inventor on seven NTP patents and accusing NTP of copyright infringement and unjust enrichment.
To make a long story short, Tavroy worked for one of NTP founder Thomas Campana’s companies, thought up the idea of sending email to his pager to make his job a little easier, wrote up some code to make all this happen, and “through omission, inadvertence and/or error,” was left off the patent when filed.
Tavroy says he has proof that he, in fact, wrote the code and NTP even admits that he did. Whether or not Tavroy is entitled to a piece of the patents, however, is a different story. We will have to keep our eye on this one to see how it turns out. If NTP gets their just due, Tavroy stands to be a very rich man.
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