“Billionaire Paul Allen today renewed his effort to sue Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, AOL and other companies for patent infringement,” Brier Dudley reports for The Seattle Times.
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“Allen’s case was rejected on Dec. 10 by a federal judge in Seattle who said it was too vague. U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman told Allen he had until Dec. 28 to file an amended suit,” Dudley reports. “Just meeting the deadline, Allen filed an expanded version of the original suit with more details of how the companies allegedly infringed. The filing also includes 40 exhibits, many of which are screenshots of Web sites with modules highlighted.”
Dudley reports, “Allen’s suit alleges that his patents cover, among other things, systems that automatically call up and display related content… For instance, when viewing a product on Apple’s iTunes store, the store automatically suggests related content that may be of interest. The suit filed today argues that this infringes on at least 20 claims made by a patent Allen holds.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dude oughta be suing his dentist.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Judge Bork” and “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Really MDN, your response to this news is to insult the guys appearance. I expect or more reasoned take from MDN on this issue. There are plenty of arguments that can be made against the lawsuit. Your take should reflect that and not stoop to personal insults.
Restraining order: Microsoft must stay at least 500 yards from Apple at all times.
Fortunately, for MS, they’re way behind already!
Dont cry out loud. I bet his breath smells like hot garbage
The dude’s got more money than he can spend in his lifetime. For the love of all things holy get your chompers fixed.
I’m still pissed he killed TechTV.
LOL @ MDN Take!
@Ned: Lighten up, honey, it’s just a joke.
From the looks of things, one would think Allen is British.
Time to institute ” Loser pays “. This has fail written all over it.
All that money and when he smiles- it’s like a Zune. Ever pondered where they got that brown for their music player?
Houston……..,,we have a solution!
Ned,
The flippancy of MDN’s Take speaks volumes to those who aren’t knee-jerk slaves to Political Correctness.
The amended suit additional details will have to be very specific and clear and how those companies are infringing his patent(s). And then, I guess, Mr Allen will have to prove those infringing are using same whatever method covered by the patent.
Because “systems that automatically call up and display related content…” is something anyone will eventually want/need to do, one way or another, when developing [for Internet/web] systems or applications.
some of the claims are silly and will be rejected right away
@Ned,
If you’ve got the money, there’s no excuse for being hideous.
Woah, gotta little Danny Devito Penguin thing goin on there… yowzer..
Even if Apple and others *are* infringing on the patents in question (and that remains to be judged), it is possible that the patents can be successfully attacked as invalid. If the amended suit makes it past the federal judge this time, then this fiasco might take years to unravel.
No worries, Apple has $51B (and growing) in armor and the will to battle to the end.
I agree, but sadly that was the first thing I noticed too. I’m only a thousandaire and even I go to the dentist twice a year. Dude does need to invest in his teeth and not file idiotic patent trolling lawsuits.
i heard from one of his employees that he’s a total and utter asshole who lives on another planet
a planet with crap designers
Hey Paul, leave Apple alone. Why don’t you spend your time trying to improve the Trailblazers instead.
If to shave Paul Allen’s head to bald, then you would recognize that he is actually Steven Ballmer.
What happen did this guy spend all his money on stupid ventures and now needs to bring frivolous law suits, hoping to pick up some cash from companies just paying him to go away?
The first try looked like a hail mary, which the judge threw out for its vagueness. Let’s see if this is any more than a fishing expedition.
Paul likes things big, like his actual fishing boat, as big as a navy cruiser. His physique is modeled on the microsoft surface product.
Every online based computer system returns related data since the first online 3270 computer screens came into existence. There is so much prior art out there that this patent is invalid. Just think about it. On a 3270 screen (late 1970’s) you enter the customer’s id number into a field on the screen and up pops his relative data (e.g. sales, orders, invoices, etc.).
Well at least he isn’t suing me…but give it time…he seems to be working his way down the list.
The bipolar idiot should just sue himself.
@auramac,
I agree. At least he’d have a chance of winning.
To all you inconsiderate bastards commenting on his teeth:
It looks like he has tetracycline staining of the teeth, a condition caused by his mother being prescribed the antibiotic tetracycline while she was pregnant with him, or when he was a child. He is of the age when this effect was not yet known.
Yes, there are remedies, painful and expensive. Yes he is rich. but maybe he is not so vain as to care about it.
You are pretty shallow if that is all you can comment on.