Sorry, but that's simply not accurate. NTP was founded by Thomas Campana, Jr., an electrical engineer who invented the technology of push email delivery. Push, BTW, is the exact technology that made the Blackberry so successful, because it eliminated the steps of connecting to a server, logging on to that server, and retrieving any waiting email. With push, the handheld device only has to wait for the server to send the email.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a company that licenses intellectual property that it owns. Nothing. Campana didn't have the money to take his invention to market, so he elected to go the licensing route instead. IP is just as real a product as anything else. There's also nothing whatever wrong with going after someone who comes along and steals your property, then thumbs their nose at you when you ask them to either stop using it or pay up.
That's exactly what happened in this case. And BTW, both Nokia and Good Technology have properly licensed NTP technology.
MM
I don't have any quarrel with the idea of IP and people being able to profit from their ideas.
The patent office doesn't seem, so far, to agree with NTP. This to me is the key piece. If I've mischaracterized NTP I'll be happy to admit that, but I don't think so just yet. It would depend entirely on the specifics of the patent application and the actual system being used by RIM. Merely claiming a stake in any sort of "push" system doesn't cut it.
It's like how you can't patent the idea of an airplane, but you can patent a particular design, shape and structure of a particular wing, or engine, or whatever. RIM would have to have taken NTP's push system exactly, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that they did.