NTP Co-founder on BlackBerry: “We should have taken the money when we had the chance”

Let me first say that Don Stout, co-founder of NTP, didn’t actually say that NTP should have taken the money when they had the chance, however, I guarantee you that the thought has run across his mind. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. As the days go by, it looks like all Mr. Stout and NTP are going to get from Research in Motion is a stack of lawyer bills and maybe a free BlackBerry 8700c from Amazon.com

It seems to me, with Stout being a patent lawyer and all, that he, of all people, should have been able to read the writing on the wall way back when the first NTP patent was preliminarily ruled invalid. Mr. Stout knows that the USPTO pretty much grants a patent to anyone who fills out the paperwork correctly and doesn’t really investigate it unless someone claims that their patent has been violated.

Dude, RIM offered you guys $450 million. Lets put that into perspective. If you gave everyone in the U.S. a dollar, you would still have over $100 million left. You guys actually accepted the offer before your rejected it. What idiot came up and said, “Boss, I know that RIM is going to give us $450 mill to make this go away, and even though the injunction that we got a couple of years ago has yet to be enforced and the USPTO is overturning our patents left and right, I think that we can get more.

I believe that it is Forbes that puts out a list of the worst CEOs in America and I am not sure if there is a category for patent troll companies with no saleable product or service other than patents, but, if there is Don Stout has to go to the top of the list.