Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has filed a suit this week against Apple, Google, Facebook, AOL, Netflix, Yahoo, and several others claiming patent infringement. Allen filed this suit on behalf of his old company Interval Licensing LLC, which is no longer in business. He claims, however, that they hold various patents that are “fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today.”
What does that mean, exactly? Allen’s claim is that Interval patented “technologies that display related content, provide unobtrusive on-screen alerts, and recommendations based on preference or online activity.” His stance is that AOL’s ‘related links’ falls into this category, as does Facebook informing you via news feed what your friends are watching and playing, and Netflix’s recommendations based on your ratings of movies you’ve watched. Also, the alert systems used by AOL, Yahoo IM, Apple, and the Android mobile OS are being targeted as infringing.
This suit was originally filed back in August, but the judge threw it out the first time, needed more specifics. Well Allen has now re-filed, and we’ll have to wait and see how the courts view the case this time around.
[via PCMag.com]