Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has reloaded in his attempt to sue the world for patent infringement. Allen’s Interval Licensing filed an amended patent infringement suit against most of the leading online tech companies. The first try (which I wrote about here) was tossed out by the judge because it failed to point out exactly how each firm stole Allen’s ideas.
Interval’s amended, 35-page filing (PDF) claims that Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Facebook, and eight other online companies use Allen’s patents whenever they use a browser for navigating through information, managing a user’s peripheral attention while using a device, and alerting users to items of current interest. The filing claims that features as Apple’s Dashboard software, the notifications interface in Google’s Android operating system, and Netflix’s (NFLX) viewing suggestions are infringing on Interval patents. It asks for unspecified damages from those companies as well as an injunction on them shipping any products with allegedly infringing features.
It looks like Google’s Android operating system is directly targeted by the lawsuit including its notification system for texts, Google Voice messages, e-mails, and other alerts display information “to a user of a mobile device in an unobtrusive manner that occupies the peripheral attention of the user.” As before, the suit doesn’t target Microsoft (MSFT) or Amazon (AMZN) (which pays rent to Allen’s Vulcan Real Estate), even though both company’s products would seem to infringe on the same patents.
Rob Pegoraro at the Washington Post writes:
the Interval claims continue to be insultingly generic. For instance, an allegation that AOL and Gmail’s spam-filtering software infringes on an Interval patent because it is “based at least in part on a comparison between the new email and other emails that have been received.” (Sure: Like nobody ever thought to make such a statistical comparison until Interval came along.) Later, it contends that when Netflix “generates a display of related content items” after “a user views a particular content item,” that infringes on an Interval patent too. (Right, because the concept of a store or a catalog suggesting a related item to a shopper didn’t exist until Interval scientists had a brainstorming session.)
Mr. Pegoraro continues:
Interval’s patents are junk. They describe general concepts that should have been obvious to anybody of ordinary skill in this field in the mid 1990s–and for which it shouldn’t be difficult to find “prior art” showing that other people had thought of the same thing years before. Had the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office provided the “high quality” examination of patent applications it promises, it’s hard to see how these patents would have been granted in the first place.
Mr. Pegoraro also cites PaidContent.org’s Joe Mullin in a commentary (emphasis in the original):
If patent claims on such basic ideas are found to be valid, there are surely hundreds of other potential defendants that could be sued by Interval Licensing. Paul Allen would be essentially a tax collector for the internet.
The firms named in the suit are:
- AOL (AOL),
- Apple,
- eBay (EBAY),
- Facebook,
- Google,
- Netflix,
- Office Depot (ODP),
- OfficeMax (OMX),
- Staples (SPLS),
- Yahoo (YHOO) and
- YouTube.
Do you believe the U.S. Patent Office is still useful?
Does Paul Allen deserve to collect a tax from every Internet user?
Related articles
- Woz: Paul Allen should stop ‘that patent troll thing’ (electronista.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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