A woman is always buying something - Ovid
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Microsoft co-founder sues everyone but Microsoft and Amazon
MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER Paul Allen has decided to wage a legal battle against just about everyone by claiming patent infringement against a number of the Internet's biggest names.
The saga revolves around a company that Allen founded in 1992, Interval Research. Now little more than a patent holding outfit, Interval has alleged that AOL, Apple, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, Officemax, Staples, Yahoo and Youtube are all using up to four of its patented inventions without licences.
Allen invested tens of millions into the outfit some years ago and it employed some notable researchers to come up with ideas that one day might be profitable. Interval filed many seemingly wide ranging patents which it now says are "key processes in e-commerce".
Allen has left Microsoft out of the complaint that claims patent infringements which, according to Allen's spokesman, relate to "key pieces of the Internet". Most of the defendants named are e-commerce firms, but perhaps the largest e-commerce company, Amazon, is not among them. However, like Microsoft, Amazon is headquartered in Paul Allen's home town of Seattle, Washington.
It's not surprising that many of the companies named in the lawsuit have already said that they will defend themselves against Interval's lawsuit. Equally unsurprising is the fact that many are claiming that Interval, a firm that for all intents and purposes ceased to exist a decade ago, is simply being a patent troll.
According to PatentlyO, the patents are well drafted though that may not be enough for Allen to succeed. The patents have been described as extremely broad and quite vague. Legal arguments are also likely to focus on whether the inventions were blindingly obvious when the patents were filed. Apparently there are also some questions about how, exactly, the defendants are infringing the patents. Then there's the question, why did Interval wait until now to file suit? For many years now it has had ample time to sue these companies while the economy was in far better shape than it is today.
Over its active lifetime, Interval managed to amass about 300 patents. The firm was even referenced in Sergey Brin and Larry Page's research thesis in which the pair presented the ideas that turned into Google. At this point it is not known whether this will hurt Google's chances to wriggle out of Allen's lawsuit.
In reality, Interval might be angling for some sort of settlement from one of the firms it has accused of patent infringement. Should any single firm cave in, Interval's allegations will gain credence and help it gain traction against the others. Its actions could galvanise some of the Internet's biggest rivals to circle the wagons in order to safeguard their own revenues.
One also must wonder if Microsoft's exclusion is a sign of how little the firm has achieved on the Internet or whether Allen is just protecting his investment by managing not to, in effect, sue himself. But then, too, that might bring up antitrust questions.
It's not at all clear what is going on here, but whatever it is, it looks like it's going to drag through the courts for a long time. µ
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First SCO, then Oracle, now Paul Allen...all these legal actions just happen to help out Microsoft by hurting their competitors.
Well, if you can't innovate, and you have a bad public image as a corporate bully, then litigate (by proxy).
Hopefully this will all backfire by demonstrating that the only way the world can progress, innovate, and prosper is by eliminating software patents once and for all.
bigger_luddite : I am amazed that anyone actually remembers that part of computing history. Do you also remember how microsoft was sued for millions shortly after they went public because they did not fulfill their agreement with Seattle Computing and they lost ? Fortunately, very few software patents were filed back then.
The fact of the matter though is that microsoft did not actually create many of their products. They essentially bought ms-dos and Excel, Word, Access, and Visio were all purchased (or otherwise acquired) from other companies also. What first put microsoft on the map was a BASIC interpreter that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a long long time ago. If Gary Kildall had not decided that he wanted to fly his plane instead of talking to a bunch of IBM suits PC software as we know it today could be entirely different.
They cannot sue Micr0$uck$, if they did and won they would have to turn the internet off because the LoseDoze operating system (O/S) is the only option available if you want to point and click and surf the web and cut and paste.
There might be software M$ didn't BORROW from somewhere else, but I can't think of any. Many "new" features I have seen in Linux or OS X. You would think they invented the Internet while in fact they had nothing to do with it or the standards that make it work.
I would personally LOVE to sue M$ and no pay for they crap for an operating system when I but a new computer.
But, first essential to be rich is to get past conscience such as seeing any relation between income and productive work. Oddly, that's the first requirement to be a lawyer or a thief, too.
Anyway, this patent-trolling is so reprehensible that it made one commenter I read elsewhere question whether Allen was ever productive at all. I doubt it. Go back to "Seattle DOS" or "QDOS", the CPM-like code that M$ bought and turned into MS/PCDOS. If this principle of vague broad patent claims were applied to the people who wrote QDOS, besides Gary Kildall, who wrote CPM-86 that QDOS was essentially copied from, then Allen and Gates and the rest of the M$ crime syndicate really owe them *every* last cent they've got, and then some.
Alex F : apparently you did not even read the article. It does not say that Microsoft is suing anyone. It says a company owned by the co-founder of Microsoft is suing a bunch of companies and Microsoft is not one of them.
Your rant is misplaced and misdirected. That is not to say it is wrong but it is not pertinent to this article.
So Microsoft has the nerve to sue someone for patent infringement? What about when they released Windows XP which is still being sold, it contains pirated software in their system. How's that fair Microsoft? You make millions of dollars almost daily. get a grip and stop being so greedy.