Microsoft co-founder sues 11 companies for patent infringement

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft yesterday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 11 companies including Apple and Google on four patents on search, multimedia, databases and screen activity.

Interval Licensing holds patents of Interval Research, the now defunct company founded by Allen and David Liddle in 1992 to perform advanced research and development in the areas of information systems, communications, and computer science.

The patents in the lawsuit cover fundamental web technologies first developed at Interval Research in the 1990s, which the company believes are being infringed by major e-commerce and web search companies.

The companies named in the lawsuit are all industry heavyweights like AOL, Apple, eBay, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube.

The patents are for 'browser for use in navigating a body of information', two patents for Attention Manager for 'occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device', and the fourth for 'alerting users to items of current interest'.

These patents are fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today. The four patents allow online users to know when items of interest appear, like stock prices, news updates and video images to pop up on the computer screen while working on something else.