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Paul Allen Files Patent Suit Against Apple, Google, Yahoo, Others
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."
...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
I read these patents as:
* Patenting text summarization.
* Patenting rating systems.
The idea that either of those is a patentable invention is absurd. Specific algorithms to do either one, sure, but you can't patent general concepts.
I have patented suing for patent damages. And I won't license it to him.
Read for yourself:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080270152%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080270152&RS=DN/20080270152
This space for rent.
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.
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.
If I was trying to get money out of AOL, I'd be in a big hurry too!
Me, too!
Having licensed a few of my own patents to big companies, it's very likely he's been in negotiations for 3-4 years and they finally broke down. It's not at all uncommon to take 2-3 years to negotiate a license agreement, and that usually only starts after the patent is actually issued AND the potential licensee has had 6-12 months to read and fully comprehend the issued patent.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is amusing. Here's some history on the company. Interval Research was an R&D outfit that Paul Allen founded back in the 1990's. You've never heard of it, because they were incredibly secretive. So hush-hush that when they went belly-up no one outside of the company knew about it. Literally. It took months before the Press finally got wind of it.
The place was a great place to be if you were doing research. Literally "let a thousand roses bloom". Unfortunately, they were horribly mismanaged. Allen blew hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly over budget, before he finally realized that he wasn't getting anything out it. They wanted to be the next version of SRI. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out.
Top management was, at best, incompetent. At worse, downright crooks. They hired some people on certain terms, and then shortly afterwards said "Opps - we really meant to hire you at a lower level". Truly a boneheaded move. Fortunately it didn't happen to me, but the look on people's faces when they found out was unforgettable.
Interval did some really amazing stuff; years ahead of its time. But they could never get the products out to market (though they tried), mostly due to amazing incompetence on the part of the lead engineers. You know the type. Big egos and no talent. Perhaps there was an exception to that rule, but I don't recall it.
I'm not surprised that Paul Allen has turned into a Patent Troll; it will be the only way he can get his money back. The only thing surprising is that it took him so long. But he never impressed me as being the sharpest knife in the drawer. As for other history, they had a number of big names there, from many fields. In tech, you may have heard of Lee Felsenstein if you're familiar with history. Their office was in the Research area of Palo Alto. Near Stanford, down the street from the Wall Street Journal, between Page Mill and Hillview
Despite that unfortunate ending, I still look back fondly on Interval. They paid well, too. I made lots of money off of Paul Allen. Thanks, Paul!