Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen re-launched his patent lawsuit against Apple, Google and a host of other large tech companies.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s firm Interval Licensing LLC has decided to re-launch a patent-infringement lawsuit against some of country’s biggest tech companies, including Apple and Google. That comes despite the original lawsuit’s dismissal earlier in December.
In the wake of that dismissal, Judge Marsha J. Pechman, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle, demanded that Allen’s legal counsel revise the lawsuit by Dec. 28. Specifically, Pechman asked for more detailed allegations; the new case (No. C10-1385 MJP) indeed seems to delve more deeply into the defendants’ supposed patent violations.
Allen’s original lawsuit, filed Aug. 27, claimed violations of patents developed by his Interval Research Corp., a technology incubator. In addition to Apple and Google, other companies in the crosshairs include AOL, eBay, Facebook, Yahoo, Office Depot, OfficeMax, YouTube and Staples. The four patents in question involve technologies related to e-commerce and online browsing, such as online user alerts and ways for drawing users’ attention to a nearby screen. Microsoft is not named in the lawsuit.
“Paul thinks this is important, not just to him but to the researchers at Interval who created this technology,” a spokesperson for Allen told The Wall Street Journal Aug. 27. “We recognize that innovation has a value, and patents are a way to reflect that.” (more…)