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Paul Allen Files Patent Suit Against Apple, Google, Yahoo, Others

Posted by Soulskill on from the going-for-the-gusto dept.

mewshi_nya writes "A firm run by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen filed suit alleging 11 technology companies are violating patents developed at a Silicon Valley lab that Allen financed more than a decade ago. Named in the lawsuit: Apple, Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google's YouTube subsidiary. The suit doesn't name Microsoft, Amazon.com or other tech companies in Seattle where Allen is based, and it doesn't estimate a damage amount. The suit lists violations of four patents (PDF) for technology that appear to be key components of the operations of the companies — and that of e-commerce and Internet search companies in general."

9 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Is it just me... by magsol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...or do the patent lawsuits that show up on /. seem frivolous to the point of absurdity?

    If so, is that sample bias? Or are all patent lawsuits intrinsically ridiculous?

    --
    "I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
    1. Re:Is it just me... by God'sDuck · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...or do the patent lawsuits that show up on /. seem frivolous to the point of absurdity?
      If so, is that sample bias? Or are all patent lawsuits intrinsically ridiculous?

      More like: nine times out of ten, when it's not frivolous, it's not news because it's settled by negotiation behind closed doors. Companies have to want to make a public stand against a patent to choose to let it go to court, which means most cases involve a troll at one end or another. The tenth case is just the one where negotiations fell through. And you can tell those because they're inevitably answered by countersuits where the defendant returns fire against the plaintiff until somebody settles.

  2. Re:Why now? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No no no, he financed the development of this a little over a decade ago. He filed for these about a decade ago and they were only actually issued about 5 years ago - Now, why he waited 5 years to sue is beyond me, but that seems to be the growing trend nowadays. Wait until the most profitable organizations are using it and then sue them for infringement and make a bit of profit.

    Is he trolling? Well, kind of, yes. But its not like he bought up these patents and are now suing anyone he wants, he actually did have invested interest in these and they were actually developed. He's playing favourites of course, he co-founded Microsoft.

    I don't think he is trolling anymore than he is just 'playing the game'. I mean how many times have Nokia and Apple gone toe to toe with infringement?

  3. Re:Lots of companies, obvious patents by straponego · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And yet Microsoft goes to great lengths to convince people that, this time, we can trust them not to sue (see the story on .NET/Android). They learned to protect their image better in the 90s; now they use proxies like Allen's company and SCO to attack their enemies. And if some company is dumb enough to take them at their word, they can always pull out the knives once their patents are used in successful products.

  4. Re:Trial by fire by TheEyes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ah, but did you notice that Paul Allen did not sue Microsoft? Yup, he went down the list of the top search engines--number 1, 3, 4, 5, etc--but "somehow" forgot about Bing, the number 2 engine.

    No, allowing this lawsuit to succeed will play right into his hands. It's SCO all over again: Microsoft can't compete in the free market, so they trot out another sleeper cell patent troll with its portfolio of submarine patents to try to sink their competition in the courts. And they'll keep doing it, as long as they have the money and software patents continue to be as stupid as they are.

  5. Re:Why now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    El Jobso

    His Steveness

    Thanks for making your trolling so obvious you do Slashdot a service by making it so easy to ignore anything you have to say so we can spend time on more serious posts.

  6. Re:Trial by fire by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's probably because he's using this to demonstrate to the Microsoft Board of Directors that he's shameless enough to be Microsoft's CEO after they boot out Ballmer.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  7. Prior art? by joeyblades · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, none of these are actual inventions, so I'm not sure why patents were issued, but even beyond that, if you were to allow the patenting of "ideas", Interval Research Corporation didn't originate these ideas...

    Interval Research Corporation was founded in 1992. NCSA's Mosaic browser was invented in 1992 with the first public release in 1993. Most modern browsers owe their foundations to NCSA not Interval Research Corporation. NCSA also had the first web sites to host bodies of audiovisual information as well. So this claim seems to be unfounded.

    The second and third claims are even more ludicrous. There have been "attention managers" that display alerts on video displays for as long as there have been video displays. I was programming them before Al Gore invented the internet and I was programming them on the internet before Interval Research Corporation was a gleam in Allen's eye...

    Nothing to say about the 4th patent...

  8. Re:And here I thought by ejasons · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He owns Ticketmaster; doesn't get much more evil than that...