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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed lawsuits against no fewer than nine silicon valley companies over alleged patent infringements. Targets of the suit are Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, eBay, Staples, Yahoo, AOL, and YouTube. Allen is claiming infringement of four patents by the companies. All the intellectual property in question was held by a silicon valley startup Allen ran several years ago. The company is now gone.
All the patents are described as integral to the businesses of these companies. One example is a patent held by Allen for offering suggestions on an ecommerce site based on what a customer is viewing. Facebook had a comment ready saying, "We believe this suit is completely without merit and we will fight it vigorously."
Conspicuously absent from the suit is Microsoft, which Allen is still an investor in. Amazon is also missing; the only connection there is that Amazon is based in Allen's home town of Seattle. Do you think Allen is pursuing a legitimate course of action, or is he acting like a patent troll?
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knighttoday
August 30, 2010 at 6:10pm
He's a troll. But unfortunately, that seems to be a 'acceptable' business model these days. Long ago SCO started this kind of crap and doesn't seem like anyone learned that this is not a sustainable model nor a good one. But it continues to happen anyway and good ole Paul is just jumping on the bandwagon, in spite living under a bridge.
emzfrendcrisis
August 28, 2010 at 10:29am
With companies like Apple running around patent trolling stuff they will NEVER use, it makes this seem more tame. At least Allen's patents were vital to his companies.
nHeroGo
August 28, 2010 at 9:47am
...I like this. Go Allen! Had this been on FaceBook, I would have pressed the I Like button.
gendoikari1
August 27, 2010 at 10:35pm
Paul Allen lives under a bridge for two reasons:
1) He's a (patent) troll.
2) He wasted all of his money on a big-ass yacht.
BadCommand
August 27, 2010 at 5:43pm
Your "patents" are like me patenting the right to offer you a Kleenex if your nose is running.
Patent, trademarks & IP rights in general have run completely amok in this country and it is absolutely stifling innovation!
Get a life Allen and spend some time & money on your Trail Blazers- they still suck.
tkid124
August 27, 2010 at 5:34pm
You don't say what these companies are accused of doing that violate his pattens.
"U.S. PATENT NO. 6,263,507:
Allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they're currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social-networking sites.
U.S. PATENT NO. 6,034,652, U.S. PATENT NO. 6,788,314:
Enables ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user's main activity.
U.S. PATENT NO. 6,757,682:
Allows readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject, among other things."
WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385241453119382.html?mod=e2tw
Since Amazon, the king of product suggestion, isn't being sued I can only assume this is about patten trolling. Maybe he would like to be thanked, either to sooth his pride or his pocket book for comeing up with these ideas so long ago, however he has yet to protect his pattens and they are all now common business pratices. Frankly he should be suing you too MPC; you have clearly violated U.S. PATENT NO. 6,757,682, those links to stories are clearly related to a particular subject, among other things. Honestly any website with adds violates the general statment of U.S. PATENT NO. 6,034,652, U.S. PATENT NO. 6,788,314. So that leaves us with U.S. PATENT NO. 6,263,507 I honestly belive that it is so broad that a case could be made that any website that sells products violates this. These are so broad in their statments he might as well sue my grandmother's estate, and she didn't even own a computer.
Nickompoop
August 27, 2010 at 5:03pm
Isn't suing YouTube and Google kind of redundant considering Google owns YouTube?
tornato7
August 27, 2010 at 4:23pm
These are the biggest names in the internet, and they have been sued countless times before. None of the lawsuits ever succeded
TechJunkie
August 27, 2010 at 3:18pm
I'm sick of patent trolls. This is getting extremely ridiculous....except for them suing crapple.
