Paul Allen’s Lawsuits: What’s up With That?

“For years, decades, the big companies didn’t tend to wage
patent wars on each other. The reason is simple. Major patent
holders don’t tend to target other major patent holders because of
MAD (mutually assured destruction). Or, in other words, if you sue
me, I sue you, and we can both burn potentially hundreds of
millions per year in legal costs just to conduct a business fight.
Well, that was the case until Oracle went after Google and now Paul
Allen is suing the world.

“OK, well maybe not the world, but his company, Interval
Licensing, is suing AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix,
Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube for violating
one or more of four patents. These patents are Patent No.
6,263,507, for “Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of
Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information
Represented ;” Patent No. 6,034,652, for “Attention Manager for
Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a
Display Device;” Patent No. 6,788,314, for “Attention Manager for
Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a
Display Device;” and Patent No. 6,757,682, for “Alerting Users to
Items of Current Interest.”

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