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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.
These patents describes the computer process of gathering, analyzing, and categorizing information for presentation by way of a GUI, to individual users.
The process also allows the user to view subsets of said data based on preferential tastes.
Gee, that sounds like a nifty idea. Aggregating data for the purposes of keeping people informed.
I’ll bet there are a hundred different ways to accomplish that task and Allen’s patents are one in a hundred.
Riddle me this Batman: Why is it that when Steve Jobs and Apple defend their patents, (ie slide to unlock on the iphone) everyone is behind it 100%. But when Apple allegedly infringes on another’s patents, it seems to be OK? Looks like a double standard.
Bah, even the name of his company is suspicious. Starting a company based on licensing and THEN suing people, pfft.
@ really…
My guess is some folk might be usin’ big city ‘satire’ on us.
<spit> -DING!
@really…
That is a fallacy…
In that terms, imagine Allen patented not the WAY to unlock a smartphone, but the VERY ACT of unlocking it, regardless the WAY they unlock it. So then, if you find a way to unlock a phone (by sliding an icon or shaking the device or kissing it) you are violating Allen patent.
Shit happens, more often than I want®
I hope Apple sues Paul Allen into oblivion…
Had it not been for Gates’ complete & relentless plagiarism, and Sculley’s ‘one-in-a-lifetime colossal cluelessness’, there would be no Microsoft today.
Allen should be kissing SJ’s derrier for MS’s continued existence. It won’t last much longer, in its current form.
What a farqin’ joke.
Ideas from over a decade ago? Who’d b using that anyway? Hey Microsoft, how about your monopoly over software that u were sued for?
and this is how the rich get richer.
revolution, anytime soon would be good.
This is RETARDED.
And this show why software patents are bad and why US SHOULD abandon them.
Well I’m no expert in US commercial law as others on this site obviously are so I’ll wait until a verdict before making a comment about the case(s).
The main thing to keep in mind about Paul Allen is that he is a scumbag and a crook.
He supplied the money that got Lee Boyd Malvo out of detention, then Boyd became one of the “Beltway Snipers” who was traveling around shooting people randomly.
Allen was also responsible for Microsoft’s acquisition of MS-DOS, another blight on humanity.
Allen is also drove Charter Cable into a spectacular bankruptcy. Most of his business ideas since MS-DOS have been commercial failures.
The world will be a better place someday without Paul Allen.
Pot meet Kettle.
As Dr Spooner might say, who is this shining wit?
This case is utterly without merit and should be treated with the complete contempt it deserves.
=:~)
Maybe he needs fuel or a newer submarine to fit on his yacht. Doesn’t he have cancer or something bad? Maybe he no longer has M$ health insurance.
Okay someone explain to me how a company that devised these supposed inventions in the ’90s suddenly realized in 2010 that their patents were being infringed upon.
The use of these activities have being going on for over 10 years. If they have not defended their patents until now then this smells bad. Totally un-defendable.
For a cogent take on Allen’s pernicious suit, see:
Lee Gomes blog at Forbes.