Microsoft Co-founder Sues Apple, Google, Yahoo

(AP)  Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen is suing nearly a dozen major technology companies, including Google Inc. and Apple Inc., alleging that they infringed on four Web technology patents held by his company Interval Licensing LLC.

Interval said Friday it filed the suit in a U.S. District Court in Seattle against the companies. Others named in the suit are: Facebook Inc., eBay Inc., Yahoo Inc., Netflix Inc., Office Depot Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Staples Inc. and Google-owned YouTube LLC.

Interval owns patents from Interval Research, which was a technology research and development company that Allen started with David Liddle in the early '90s.

Interval said that the patents it believes are being violated are key to how e-commerce and search companies work.

"This lawsuit is necessary to protect our investment in innovation," Paul Allen's spokesman, David Postman, said in a statement.

Most of the companies named as defendants did not immediately return requests for comment. AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said the Internet company had no comment.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes called the suit "completely without merit."

Google said the suit "reflects an unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace."

[bobnjersey]

[Interval said that the patents it believes are being violated are key to how e-commerce and search companies work.]

yea ... one of the alleged infringements is the ability to recommend something to someone when you see them showing interest in something related.

the only problem is ... merchants have been doing this for thousands of years.

[bobnjersey]

[Interval said that the patents it believes are being violated are key to how e-commerce and search companies work.]

yea ... one of the alleged infringements is the ability to recommend something to someone when you see them showing interest in something related.

the only problem is ... merchants have been doing this for thousands of years.

[us_1776]

I hate to disappoint Paul but many of us back in the 60's worked on the creation of the Internet. It was all funded by public taxpayer dollars through grants to various universities under DARPA. And all of it went into the U.S. public domain. And everything that was done after the real "discoveries" made in the 60's was just natural evolution of the art.

And I'm sure for each patent we have examples of prior art that will invalidate it.



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[stevador39]

Microsoft has strangled computer and software development. If there is to be any progress in computer development Microsoft has to be broken up. It?s a disease on the tech industry and society at large.

[JustYourAverageReader]

Maybe Xerox should sue over the theft of DOS???

[enough-already]

I agree this guy is a greedy capitalist nerd, but why doesn't a judge show some backbone and just declare his suit frivolous and throw it out, and then fine him for wasting the courts valuable time?

[us_1776]

If you fail to defend a patent in a timely manner you lose your right to protection.

These patents are decades old and if there were any validity to them then they should have been defended years and years ago as the web was evolving.

To lay in wait for years in order to spring a "trap" is not what patents were meant to be used for.

Allen failed to protect these dubious patents and is now trying to use them for economic blackmail.




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[Ordflyer]

AS IF HE NEEDS ANY MORE MONEY!!!

Now he wants to control all e-commerce????!!!!!!

Parasite!!!!

[gruven13777]

I heard Google's lead counsel is a guy named Patrick Bateman. Apparently he's a real stickler for detail and has a way of getting right to the point while he chews people up in the courtroom.

[gruven13777]

Sounds like he's bored with all his billions.

Hey Paul, you should try and give your golf game another chance!