Paul Allen Amends Lawsuit Against Facebook, Apple

itwbennett writes "A Federal judge dismissed Paul Allen's initial patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, Facebook, Google and others earlier this month because it was too vague and gave Allen until Dec. 28 to file an amendment providing more details of his claims. His lawyers responded with a 35-page document filed late Tuesday. The amendment details features of the defendants' websites that are alleged to infringe on the patents and also includes a last-minute amendment that targets Google's Android mobile operating system in a move that could spell trouble for phone manufacturers and app developers."

Groklaw

[DCFusor]

Has been covering this one. Allen's Interval has patented things that absolutely everyone has been using for decades, if not longer, and this may just help with the fight against software patents generally, as virtually no one is untouched -- he's only sued less the half the relevant world so far -- big media is a possible target for some of his claims as well. GoodLuckWithThat, they are even feared by lawmakers. Let's hope they go all out so this stupid mess can be ended. Here's the groklaw current link. [groklaw.net]

Re:Talk about a vague patent...

[kmcarr]

No, he probably would not have. He fought and defeated the Selden patent, which was just this sort of troll patent.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsseldona.htm [about.com]

Re:Groklaw

[UnknowingFool]

List of parties being sued:

• AOL
• Apple
• eBay
• Facebook
• Google
• Netflix
• Office Depot
• OfficeMax
• Staples
• Yahoo
• YouTube

He's not suing the entire world but he's suing some pretty big players. Players that have the money and wherewithall to see this to the bitter end.

The details of the suit:

• 507: Categorize and correlate information before segmenting and presenting it to a user. Basically any display like Yahoo! News that separates out categories. All parties sued.
• 652: Present information to the user in a non-distracting way from the user's primary interaction. AOL Message pop-ups from the taskbar, Apple widgets, Google gadgets, Yahoo gadgets.
• 314: Present information to the user in a non-distracting way from the user's primary interaction. Similar to 652 but a tad more interactive. Covers all IM and talk clients.
• 682: Indicating to the user that a particular online content is of interest. Covers the "other items that might interest you" feature of many, many websites.

Looking at this patents, all of them are very generic ideas and not anything that should be patentable.