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“Mr. Allen, 57, Friday through his firm Interval Licensing LLC filed suit in federal court in Seattle asserting the companies are using technology from his laboratory,” Searcey reports. “Named in the suit, along with Apple and Google, are AOL Inc., eBay Inc., Facebook Inc., Netflix Inc., Office Depot Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Staples Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Google’s YouTube subsidiary.”
“The suit doesn’t name Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. or other technology firms in Seattle where Mr. Allen is based,” Searcey reports. “The suit doesn’t estimate a damage amount.”
Searcey reports, “The suit lists violations of four patents 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.”
Full article here.
The compliant alleging patent infringement is here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hypocrite. After the “Grand Theft GUI,” among many others, that Microsoft pulled on Apple, Allen ought to let Apple “borrow” from him (if they even did) ad infinitum.
Allen and Gates ought to be on their knees thanking Steve Jobs for giving them access to unimaginable riches. Without Jobs, Allen and Gates would be tech footnotes; co-founders of a once-popular, but long-forgotten office suite that (without a stolen desktop OS or resulting monopoly to repeatedly abuse) was quicken overtaken by superior solutions that weren’t bloated, spaghetti-coded, processor-hogging nightmares.
Oh boy. Just deflect from your own failures in court.
It’s the American Way!
One more reason I will not be going to any Blazers games this year.
Must be out of money.
Who can honestly doubt that the patent system is broken?
From the article:
“The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they’re currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.
A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user’s main activity.”
I’m glad somebody does not claim to have patented the idea of patents.
Next, Al Gore will file a law suit stopping everyone from using the World Wide Web that he alone created! You know Ben Franklin invented (or defined) electricity. maybe we should all have to shut down those power plants now too!
I am going to patent air so everyone will stop using it. Next, clouds as a way of transporting water!
“The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they’re currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.
A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user’s main activity.”
So Microsoft’s Bing and Amazon don’t do things that fall within these statements? Sounds like it would apply to any search engine or shopping site where “related” or “similar” links are shown.
@Jersey Trader,
Oh, puh! Put a sock in it!
?Desperate!4: $$$? Lymelite? Lemonaides’
More legal suits will make $
Damm blood suckers, they never get enough of what they are used to steal.
Is this the way MS is going to come up with the 500 million for Win7 mobile?
Well, with his Cable company (Charter) in bankruptcy, he has to try SOMETHING to get some cash.
…Jersey_Trader? Al Gore didn’t say he created (or invented, or whatever) the Internet, he said he helped to get those things done. I worked at both DEC and BB&N, companies that helped define the Internet. I provided assistance for the brains that did that work. Ergo, *I* helped create the Internet. Me and thousands of other IT guys who never contributed a line of code, attended a single creative meeting, or submitted a single idea. Gore helped get the government to provide the needed funding. No funding, no Internet.
… the O.T. content.
I fully expect this case to be lost by Allen because of the list of defendants provided. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to sue MSFT, but that omission could be critical to his case. If he does not defend his property, it is lost to him.
That, at least, is my understanding of those laws.
Oh, and acid … the guy(s?) who invented the patent died long enough ago that their rights would have lapsed. Except I think it was work-for-pay.
I guess he doesn’t feel he’s rich enough. Perhaps still bitter about not winning the superbowl. I agree with MDN’s take…he ought be thanking his lucky stars each morning for the incredible good fortune he has attained through a combination of hard work, affiliated company blunders (IBM), beneficial timing, fortunate alignment (writing apps for the first Mac and getting insider access to the Mac GUI and OS) and monopoly powers.
The question should always be =patented how many years ago?
I’d like to remind you all of something I said back in January of 2007…
—————————————————
In light of recent events…
Post: 2007-01-11 19:03:29, Modified: 2007-01-11 19:03:29
…something occurred to me. There is now no reason films can`t be shot in portrait orientation. I, Christina Wiley, hereby claim the original idea of films, TV shows, and other commercial features shot, edited, and presented in portrait mode.
Call my lawyers. ;P
—————————————————
I expect to see royalty checks from every one of you that now shoots movies vertically on your iPhones.
This guy threw away a lot of his money on BAD investments….Now he is desperate for more Money!
He should sue Microsoft for making his stock almost worthless.
“This guy threw away a lot of his money on BAD investments….”
Like the Seahawks. >.<
The best thing Allen could do for himself and the Blazers is to sell the team to someone who knows something about basketball. I mean, Greg Oden instead of Kevin Durant?
@neomonkey
You got that right!
WTF is all I can say…
You certainly don’t hear much about Paul Allen, apart from sports. Nevertheless I just love the righteous indignation and sanctimonious fanboyism if somebody else should dare assert their patent ownership rights against apple (and others). It’s ok for apple to do it but not to have to done to them? Can you say hypocrites.
As for the ‘Great GUI ripoff’, if apple and jobs didn’t patent the very core of the business then it says quite clearly that they don’t mind others taking it and using it for their own. Hence it was.
@macdoc I’d really love to be as poor as him or even 13 times poorer: 13-14 billion isn’t bad!
Allen has introduced a stunning new innovation! He sued them in Seattle, instead of patent-troll heaven, east Texas.
“I think it is brilliant, what an idea!
And I was there, I saw it happen:
He took the idea, ripe on the tree. He
plucked it and he put it in his pocket.
It is, dare I say, genius?
No, no… but maybe it is. Maybe I am
in the presence of greatness…” — C.D. Bales