
Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents - JereCoh
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385241453119382.html
======
jsz0
_"We recognize that innovation has a value, and patents are the way to protect
that."_

Innovation has no value to the public if you don't produce and ship a good
product. In my opinion the company that actually ships something should always
have the upper hand because it's good for consumers. Patent reform should
follow a use-it-or-lose-it model. If a company comes up with an innovative
idea, ships a product, and that product stays on the market (in one form or
another) for many years they probably deserve to own the patent. If people are
buying it then it must be halfway decent. If they never produce a shipping
product they shouldn't be able to hold the patent hostage. If they decide to
stop selling a product that uses the patent someone else should have the
opportunity to dust it off.

~~~
_delirium
I mostly agree, but patents _were_ partly intended to protect small-fry
scientists/inventors who came up with good ideas that they couldn't
necessarily commercialize themselves, by providing a legal mechanism to keep
manufacturers from just ripping off the idea as they shopped it around. It
makes more sense when it's not a portfolio company holding hundreds of
patents, though, and when the inventions are genuine breakthroughs: e.g. if a
biotech researcher comes up with something that really would improve
pharmaceutical research greatly, it seems okay to me if there's a legal
mechanism to make pharmaceutical firms pay him licensing fees if they want to
use the invention, even if he himself never ramps up into pharmaceutical
research. This becomes much more of a minefield if the bar to
novelty/nonobviousness is low, though, because then you just get people
preemptively "inventing" a bunch of things that other people would've found
anyway, and then demanding licensing fees.

~~~
narrator
Patents are good for protecting inventions that require a large amount of
capital investment to bring to production.

Fashion and food were traditionally not protected by patents because to make a
cake or a dress, one only needed an oven or a sowing machine. On the other
hand, complicated manufactured goods needed patent protection because the
factories needed to produce them would cost millions to build, and a small
inventor could never raise the money without patent protection.

In the age of computing, the cost of the equipment to create software is
negligible, so it's far more optimal to not grant patent protection.

~~~
sandipagr
"Fashion and food were traditionally not protected by patents because to make
a cake or a dress, one only needed an oven or a sowing machine. "

Is that really true? I don't know I am just asking. I personally don't think
capital investment should have anything to do with the patent. It's like
giving no value to the innovative technologies made by people in garage. Just
doesn't make sense to me.

On a side note, do you consider time as capital investment?

~~~
metamemetics
> _Is that really true?_

Yes. Or more precisely because clothes and food are too "utilitarian".

"Lessons from fashion's free culture"

[http://ca.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion...](http://ca.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html)

"Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion
industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna
Blakley."

~~~
nickpinkston
So then music, software, books, etc. - all requiring low capital, should be in
the same realm of fashion - right? If you don't believe that's true: please
compare capital of an industrial bakery to a software company of the same
revenue/profit.

~~~
astrodust
The important distinction between fashion and software is that clothing is
useless unless properly manufactured. The materials and manufacturing process
are an integral part of the final product. To duplicate a garment is to
reverse engineer it, source the materials, and then remarket it as a knock-
off, or as some imitation item under another brand.

Fashion doesn't need strict copyright enforcement because by the time you've
reverse engineered something and put it into production, it's already wildly
out of date.

You can see how Apple applies this principle to their main products,
aggressively innovating so that by the time their products are copied, which
is inevitable, they have already obsoleted them.

Software can be duplicated at effectively zero cost to produce an identical
copy. It also has a much longer lifespan for mature packages (Office, XP,
etc.), where people will use the same software, plus or minus patches, for
five years or more.

There needs to be some kind of reasonable limitation on what people are able
to do with software that they purchase, so at the very least a form of
copyright is required, not unlike protections offered to books.

The real thorn is that software patents are mostly preposterous, with very few
requiring actual innovation to produce. It's like trying to patent a plot
twist or a character quirk and then suing all authors that use it.

~~~
metamemetics
Copywright != patent

copyright protects the expression of an idea, while a patent protects the idea
itself

------
jacquesm
That's got to be the mother of all patent lawsuits to date.

I hope that it will now become clear to the world at large that a patent
without any intention to produce a product is simply a waste of time and
money. I'd much prefer it if all these patent filing clowns would keep their
'research' locked up in their vaults and called them trade secrets, that would
give nobodies like me a chance at just getting on with our jobs without
stepping on someones patented toes.

~~~
dminor
The optimistic side of me hopes that people are seeing the writing on the wall
for software patents, and are hoping to extract value before the landscape
changes.

~~~
Timothee
I have a question: what makes software different from other
disciplines/domains with regards to patents? Why are "software patents" more
often pointed out as pointless than other kinds of patents?

~~~
nex3
Software patents have a strong tendency to be both vague and obvious. Although
these are supposed to make something unpatentable, this doesn't happen in
practice with software patents (possibly due to the relative novelty of
software and lack of understanding among non-technical people).

------
muhfuhkuh
This is the problem with Patent troll "portfolio companies" like his: It
doesn't make anything, so there can never be a countersuit with protective
patents.

So, even if we had IBM step in with its portfolio of 30,000 patents (and
growing by 5000 each year) and snarl up the entire industry to prove a point,
Allen would be like "whatever" and soldier on, because he makes nothing.

~~~
dedward
disclaimer- I'm against software patents in general. However, in this case, to
argue against my own opinions:

The research and resultant patents in this case were in the public record for
all to see, read, and if they found the idea useable, free to contact the
patent holder to discuss a deal.

The patent systems a broken mess - no argument here. But a firm that actually
did research on specific items, kept track of a relatively small portfolio and
then selectively went after some big boys isn't as much of a patent troll as
those who just buy up thousands and thousands of them and muscle people
around.)

~~~
arebop
Take your not-so-much-of-a-troll company and allow them to hire not only
researcher-employees, but also researcher-independent-contractors. Are they
more trollish now? If not, what if some of their researchers band together to
lower their insurance costs and improve their tax situation; they establish
their own contracting firm which the not-a-troll company pays to supply
researchers. Finally, what if this contracting firm works on a part-time or
short-term basis with many companies who want research done?

The problem with trolling is not that properties that can be sold and
monetized by the new owner. It is that ideas are being treated as (material)
property. Ideas can be formed by multiple persons independently, and any given
idea can be shared among any number of thinkers without diminishing the
strength of the thought. In particular, you can have submarine patents that
nobody realizes they're infringing until the day the troll emerges from under
his bridge to tell the whole world to pay up. Or, one can be granted a patent
on an idea that's actually quite common and obvious, and this patent can back
up a threat of costly and risky litigation, effecting the coercive transfer of
money from productive members of society to patent-system-abusers.

Innovators need access to scarce material goods and they have limited
lifetimes, but extending our effective scheme for managing scarce resources to
the ideas they develop is not working so well.

------
adharmad
Sad to see him become a Patent troll.

Also, what could be the point of such a lawsuit? Surely Paul Allen cannot
think that he can have out-of-court settlements (no cross-licensing since his
company does not produce anything) with all the listed companies. Some of them
will surely fight back.

~~~
jacquesm
> Sad to see him become a Patent troll.

Yes, quite. Paul Allen had an excellent reputation up to this point. He always
struck me as the one with the interesting projects, such as backing Burt
Rutan.

> Some of them will surely fight back.

 _all_ of them will fight back.

~~~
ssp
Maybe he is trying to destroy the patent system.

If you have valid patents that read on various valuable products, and you can
bank roll a credible law suit _asking for injunctions and not accepting any
other kind of relief_ , that might create enough chaos to get the attention of
law makers.

~~~
jacquesm
I'll believe that when I see it. But it's a possibility.

The breadth of this is certainly something to give food for thought, this is
not an 'ordinary' patent troll lawsuit.

Part of me has Paul Allen as a very nice and visionary guy and part of me
reminds me that he didn't exactly distance himself from microsofts illegal
practices during the Gates' years.

------
andrewgioia
It's really odd that Paul Allen is doing this, he certainly doesn't need the
money or the hassle. Is it possible that he's suing these high profile
companies to spark some kind of legislative reform re: software patents?

~~~
CamperBob
Little is known publicly about Allen's state of health these days, or who is
really in control of his holdings, for that matter.

------
VMG
Some background info from a /. comment:
[http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1768970&cid=3340...](http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1768970&cid=33401104)

 _This is amusing. Here's some history on the company. Interval Research was
an R &D outfit that Paul Allen founded back in the 1990's. You've never heard
of it, because they were incredibly secretive. So hush-hush that when they
went belly-up no one outside of the company knew about it. Literally. It took
months before the Press finally got wind of it.

The place was a great place to be if you were doing research. Literally "let a
thousand roses bloom". Unfortunately, they were horribly mismanaged. Allen
blew hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly over budget, before he finally
realized that he wasn't getting anything out it. They wanted to be the next
version of SRI. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out.

Top management was, at best, incompetent. At worse, downright crooks. They
hired some people on certain terms, and then shortly afterwards said "Opps -
we really meant to hire you at a lower level". Truly a boneheaded move.
Fortunately it didn't happen to me, but the look on people's faces when they
found out was unforgettable.

Interval did some really amazing stuff; years ahead of its time. But they
could never get the products out to market (though they tried), mostly due to
amazing incompetence on the part of the lead engineers. You know the type. Big
egos and no talent. Perhaps there was an exception to that rule, but I don't
recall it.

I'm not surprised that Paul Allen has turned into a Patent Troll; it will be
the only way he can get his money back. The only thing surprising is that it
took him so long. But he never impressed me as being the sharpest knife in the
drawer. As for other history, they had a number of big names there, from many
fields. In tech, you may have heard of Lee Felsenstein if you're familiar with
history. Their office was in the Research area of Palo Alto. Near Stanford,
down the street from the Wall Street Journal, between Page Mill and Hillview

Despite that unfortunate ending, I still look back fondly on Interval. They
paid well, too. I made lots of money off of Paul Allen. Thanks, Paul!_

------
uptown
So he's suing Apple, Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot,
OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube.

~~~
jacquesm
The only one missing from that list is Microsoft, wonder why... and youtube ==
google.

~~~
jggube
> "The only one missing from that list is Microsoft"

FTA: "Notably missing from the defendants' list are Microsoft, in which Mr.
Allen remains a major investor"

~~~
jacquesm
That was the point.

Wonder if microsoft has a deal with Allen or if he just doesn't want to sue
the company he has a stake in.

This could easily be spun as Allen as the attack dog against microsofts
competition.

~~~
jggube
If I had to guess, it's because he doesn't want to sue a company he has a
stake in. That's like suing yourself. Patent and intellectual property
copyright is a funny thing; the owner can enforce (or try to get it enforced)
when they feel like it. They usually let it go when it's to their benefit.

------
Kilimanjaro
I'll burn a hundred points but somebody has to say it:

HEY PAUL ALLEN, GO FUCK YOURSELF!

------
protomyth
It would be really cool if mainstream media would link to the patents the
article talks about because their description is horrible.

~~~
dwynings
Patents are referenced here:
[https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://online.wsj.com/pub...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/intervallicensingcomplaint0827.pdf)

U.S. PATENT NO. 6,263,507 U.S. PATENT NO. 6,757,682 U.S. PATENT NO. 6,788,314
U.S. PATENT NO. 6,034,652

~~~
vrruiz
\- 6,263,507: Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with
particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data
[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,263,507.PN.&OS=PN/6,263,507&RS=PN/6,263,507)

\- 6,034,652: Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a
person in the vicinity of a display device
[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-
bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/6034652)

\- 6,788,314: Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a
person in the vicinity of a display device
[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-
bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/6788314)

\- 6,757,682: Alerting users to items of current interest
[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-
bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/6757682)

~~~
robryan
Just going by titles it sounds like the NYTimes related article popup at the
bottom of an article would be covered by these even more than some of the
alleged companies.

------
hsuresh
I hope such lawsuits bring an end to software patents.

------
motters
Could this be the commencement of the long feared software patent Mutually
Assured Destruction?

~~~
wmf
No, because patent trolls that don't make products can't be destroyed by
patents.

------
willheim
Who cares? It sounds big and scary and really bad... especially to us start-up
types but I'd bet that there is nothing that hasn't been patented or could be
deemed to be covered by a patent that's been put out on the web.

Seriously, start looking through the patents filed on Google (I started with
one of these Paul Allen ones, then moved on to others filed by others but
which were cited) and came to the conclusion that this is all ridiculous.

Here we see that Apple could possibly sue anyone for invoking the "mouseover"
or "hover" events:
[http://www.google.com/patents?id=mPYiAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=mPYiAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)

While I wholeheartedly agree with protecting IP, to me that is more of a
copyright issue (not ripping off code) rather than ideas.

Ultimately what it means for us is: Go forth and code. Create whatever you
want and ignore the patents out there. If you are successful, and a patent
troll sues you, you can come to an agreement (license or otherwise). Really,
no worries here.

------
marknutter
You know what I think we should do? Institute a law where you can't sue a
company for patent infringement unless you do so before they introduce and
make a substantial amount of money off that product. Say, 1 million in revenue
or something.

~~~
crystalis
Company A makes patent infringing product. Company A makes puppet Company B
that licenses product for <substantial amount of money>, successfully
fulfilling any sort of patent infringement limitation you can think of for the
low low cost of a few lawyers.

Any policy you think of is going to have ridiculous loopholes and require
companies to have patent 'watchdogs' who will need to search out fledgling
products to make sure they're not infringing on any patents. These company
watchdogs will have to justify their wages... by making even more patent
lawsuits than there are now.

------
3d3mon
Some seem rather obvious:

"The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to
consumers for items related to what they're currently viewing, or related to
online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.

A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate
stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes,
news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a
user's main activity."

------
robryan
Another interesting way to look at it, if he did win big in this case then
gave it all to worthy causes it could be a net win for society.

Hopefully it draws attention to software patents flaws. If government were
hesitant to move away from them altogether maybe they could try a 2 year trail
of no new patents or something.

------
rbanffy
> Paul Allen says he owns the technology behind all these ideas

It's hard to imagine Allen owning any technology Google or Apple are using...

------
kijinbear
He should have sued Oracle too.

------
Keyframe
Octopus ain't free, you know.

------
ignu
someone should patent being a litigious prick

~~~
mhb
Haliburton tried:

<http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/11/junk-patents.html>

~~~
dctoedt
Halliburton specifically disclaimed any intent of actually using the patent
against anyone but trolls - see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608302>

------
madair
Aristocracy is completely out of touch. Good news in a way.

------
napierzaza
Maybe it's performance art?

~~~
chrisduesing
or reverse psychology? I find it hard to imagine that someone who agreed to
donate his billions to charity suddenly becoming a patent troll. Maybe he is
trying provoke a repeal of business method patents the most direct (and
expensive) way possible.

------
lotusleaf1987
Paul Allen and Nathan Myhrvold (former-Msft CTO) must be two peas in a
pod:<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml>

~~~
CamperBob
Allen, unlike Myhrvold, has done a lot of good. This is a weird move by his
previous standards.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
True, it's just intriguing that they're both high-ups from MSFT.

------
mkramlich
my estimation of Mr. Allen has just plummeted

~~~
chmike
Check first who is on the administrative board of his company or who are the
big share holders. Mr Allen may just be the visible tip of the iceberg.

------
mkramlich
point of evidence 5,436 that US software patents are a joke and need to be
destroyed.

------
c00p3r
If Larry can, why Paul cannot? ^_^

------
sandipagr
"This lawsuit against some of America's most innovative companies reflects an
unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the
marketplace," a Google spokesman said.

I nearly choked. Are you shitting me? Marketplace doesn't allow you to "steal"
others technologies. How would they feel about others infringing their search
engine patents. Before anyone go wild on me, let me make it clear I am not
supporting Mr. Allen or software patents or even know if there is a patent
infringement here. All I am saying is if there is an infringement, I don't get
this Googler.

