Microsoft co-founder files revised patent application
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, has met a court demand to give more specific examples of his wide-ranging allegations of patent violation. But the suit, which names most major online companies, doesn’t appear any more convincing with the added detail.
The case involves four patents belonging to Interval Research, the company Allen (pictured) set up after leaving Microsoft. The gist of the patents is that Allen is claiming the rights to some extremely widely used web technologies, most notably the idea of creating automated links from one page to other pages on the same site covering a similar subject. (Like, erm, the list at the end of this article.)
After filing an initial suit in August, Allen was ordered to come back with specific examples so that the defendants (AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, Officemax, Staples, Yahoo and Youtube) had a fair chance to defend themselves.
He’s now done that, with a revised filing. The only real added detail, though, is to include screenshots of the relevant websites and software, with a neat red link drawn around the “offending” material. The new filing simply shows just how generic the patents — or at least Allen’s interpretation of the protection they offer — really are.
For example, AOL’s Instant Messenger screen shows a brief pop-up window when a chat buddy signs on or off the service. According to Allen, this infringes by displaying information including, e.g., email and “Buddy List” alerts, to a user in an unobtrusive manner that occupies the peripheral attention of the user.”
The lawsuit also takes aim at some fundamental parts of sites and services: according to Allen’s contention, the Ping recommendation in iTunes, the “related items” feature of eBay and the entire news feed in Facebook all violate the same patent.
At this point it almost seems as if the suspense lies in what reason the court will give for dismissing the case. Could it be that it will simply declare the original patents too generic and vague? Will it decide Allen has left it far too long to credibly object to the “violations”? Or will somebody raise the question of whether Microsoft (which isn’t named in the suit) has also breached the patents, or why on earth Amazon should be left off the list.
The closest thing to a credible answer for why Allen is even bothering comes from a Stanford law professor who notes that it could be a similar logic to playing the lottery: the odds of winning are extremely slim, but the potential jackpot is huge. Still, that doesn’t explain why a man worth something like $13.5 billion needs to buy a ticket in the first place.
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