Last August Interval Licensing LLC, a small research company set up by Paul Allen in 1992, filed a broad patent lawsuit in a Seattle federal court against technology giants AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google’s YouTube. His allegation – that the companies are illegally using technology owned by his firm – was, however, slammed down by Judge Marsha Pechman on the grounds that it did not specify any actual products or devices. But the 57 year old Microsoft Corp co-founder is not backing out as he relaunched a wide-ranging patent lawsuit.
Citing “faillure to dentify the infringing products or devices with any specificity,” as the reason for dismissal, Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington has earlier granted Interval the permission to file an amended complaint by December 28 to which they did.
Allen has relaunch his series of lawsuit claiming “Interval was central to research and development of technology in the Internet arena in the 1990s, amassing more than 300 patents and providing research assistance to Google”. His company, Interval, has sought damages and a halt to the alleged violations of four patents it said were fundamental to e-commerce and search.
In the court documents submitted, Allen’s firm claims four of its patents — chiefly related to the way Web data is sorted and presented — have been infringed by a number of successful companies such as AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google’s YouTube.
According to reuters :
The first patent concerns the generation of data related to information being browsed. Interval claims Google uses this technology to match advertisements from third parties to content being displayed, while AOL’s sites use it to suggest items related to news stories.
Interval claims Apple’s iTunes service uses the technology to suggest music based on a user’s searches, and that eBay Inc, Facebook, Netflix, Yahoo Inc and Office Depot’s sites have also infringed the patent in the way they direct users to related content.
The second and third patents concern relaying information on a computer screen in a peripheral, unobtrusive manner, such as in an instant messaging box or overlay.
Interval claims its patent has been infringed by features in AOL’s Instant Messenger, Apple’s Dashboard, Google Talk and Gmail Notifier, Google’s Android phone system and Yahoo Widgets.
The fourth patent concerns alerting web browsers to new items of interest based on activity of other users. Interval claims AOL uses this technology on its shopping sites, while Apple’s iTunes uses it to recommend music.
Paul Gardner Allen, one of the wealthiest people in the world with a personal net worth of US$12.7 billion is an American investor and philanthropist who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates. He is the founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., which is his private asset management company, and is chairman of Charter Communications. Together with David Liddle, they established the Interval Research Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based laboratory and new business incubator that was dissolved in 2000 after generating over 300 patents.
