Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen filed suit this week against a litany of Internet companies claiming they had violated patents awarded years ago to Allen’s now-defunct Interval Research. Many writers, including one passing himself off as me, claimed this made Allen a so-called “patent troll. ”
I don’t think that is the case.
Patent trolls are individuals or companies that habitually sue others over obscure patents. While the Interval patents generally are obscure, that doesn’t make them invalid. And the fact that Allen and then-partner Dave Liddle paid $100 million for the basic research behind those patents, well that hardly sounds like troll behavior.
If Paul Allen actually were a patent troll. he would have sued in South Texas, where all the whopping patent judgements are handed-down, not in Seattle.
Suing in Seattle is bad trollmanship.
What we have here is a guy who may be the 37th richest person in the world, but he used to be the second-richest. He’s pledged to give away his fortune and maybe wants more to give. In short, I don’t see a problem with these legal actions.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Allen will prevail. The odds are against him. While Interval developed upwards of 300 patents, that isn’t like the thousands of patents now controlled by Nathan Myrhvold’s company, Intellectual Ventures. Myrvold has acquired baskets of patents creating a strategic mass of IP and an associated legal team he can use to bludgeon almost any company into cross-licensing. Allen has no such depth (or power).
He’s just trying to turn lemons from lemonade.
He may not fit the accepted definition of a patent troll, but the actions are certainly troll-like. He’s demanding that the companies in question pay him a wodge of cash and/or cease’n’desist for engaging in such egregious behaviour as “Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest.”
In short, he’s taking advantage of a sloppy patent award and demanding that web sites stop behaving like web sites.
Irrespective of his motivation, or what he’s planning to do with the money, this isn’t a Good Thing.
Just a hunch, but the first thought that popped into my head when I read about Paul Allen doing this was “Wow, Microsoft must be really be hurting!” Not sure why, as I have no particular insight into their financial situation.
Um. Paul Allen has not been with Microsoft for decades.
Um, there are relationships we know about and relationships we don’t. It’s certainly in Allen’s interest for Microsoft to rise while its competition falls. Already Microsoft is capitalizing on Allen’s lawsuits by reminding anyone who’ll listen, and any echo chamber that’ll echo, that *they* indemnify *their* users against….well, that would be patent trolls like Allen.
Oh, yes: Bob thinks he’s not a patent troll. Okay, then, patent *shill*.
well, as you note, Allen doesn’t have the resources his targets do. he also has another problem: he doesn’t have any product that might currently be infringing that would make cross-patent negotiations even possible. so it is just win or lose, there’s no settlement possible.
speaking of patent lawsuits, will you talk more about oracle v google and perhaps explain why oracle is asking for such drastic measures? i wasn’t really under the impression they cared about java all that much, given that it is mostly “free” (as in beer) to most developers and companies. i also don’t understand targeting the phone line specifically, given that oracle isn’t even a niche player in the mobile space and has nothing of its own to fill in the gap should they prevail. is there something going on between Larry and Steve that we don’t know about?
And just how, exactly, does this benefit the common good ? Oops. Sorry. The naive and altruistic me has run amuck again. When we finally learn to live cooperatively instead of competitively, we will survive as a species. Things are not looking good in this respect.
Amen.
It’s my understanding that Paul Allen and Microsoft parted ways decades ago, so this is not any sort of Microsoft play.
I’m not buying it. From the summaries I’ve read of these patents, it doesn’t sound like something the world would be without if he hadn’t spent his money. Indeed, it doesn’t sound like they would have taken any research money to speak of.
Whatever the law, if the world doesn’t owe him an intellectual debt, then there’s no moral basis for a financial debt. In which case, he’s just a patent troll who’s not very good at it.
I think you mean East Texas instead of South Texas. There’s not a whole lot going on down in South Texas.
Courts in East Texas tend to allow the jury to decide the award rather than the bench.
Joe, Oracle/Java is far more than a bit player in mobile. 85% of the world’s mobile phones run Java, most as their primary application environment.
“What we have here is a guy who may be the 37th richest person in the world, but he used to be the second-richest. He’s pledged to give away his fortune and maybe wants more to give. In short, I don’t see a problem with these legal actions.”
So it’s OK for rich people to be behave badly as long as they give their fortunes away at some point when they have no further use for it. Sounds like moral bankruptcy to me.
I have a very strange theory. Paul Allen is sick again. He has $11 billion in the bank. He already has a legacy. He has no love for Ballmer nor Larry Ellison of Oracle. He always wrote better code than Gates. Gates was the high stakes entrepreneur.
He will never admit this publicly, but I’m guessing the reason he’s instructed his lawyers to pursue his patent claims is that deep down, he knows software patents are a load of hooey. Deep down, he knows his claims can be disputed just as much of it is “prior art”. I think he is being the “bad guy”, to deliberately lose just enough in the right place eventually to overturn all software patent claims. His lawyers can’t be in on this and can never be privy to their client’s true intention, if this is Paull Allen’s plan.
It’s sort of like Batman, at the end of the film The Dark Knight. Better, for now, that Paul Allen be thought of as the bad guy, if that is how in the long run he can achieve the most good, to hopefully update the patent process and revoke software patents.
You’re not the only one, I was thinking the same thing.
You’re both not the only one’s. Someone on last Sunday’s 2 hour TWIT proposed exactly the same theory. He doesn’t want to win, he wants loose and to stop the awarding of all software patents in the process.
Well, I certainly like your theory better than mine. It does seem strange that he would lob bombs at so many big targets with deep legal pockets, when the smarter strategy would be to go after someone smaller, and in a friendlier venue, as Cringely points out.
I don’t accept that ideas in software can be patented – however the US Patent Office does believe this and after reading through some of the patents that Allen is claiming I think that they’re just as “valid” as many others that have been litigated and defended successfully.
It’s easy to say that “it’s obvious” and “every website does it” but think back to the good old days even 10 years ago – these were cutting edge ideas then and web sites didn’t look anything like the way that they do now. These ideas were new and original then and, as successful ideas, they have become widely copied to the point that they appear ubiquitous today.
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“Patent trolls are individuals or companies that habitually sue others over obscure patents.”
No, patent trolls are individuals or companies who habitually sue others over patents they did nothing to develop, and/or over which they have no intention of creating a product.
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No, patent trolls are individuals or companies who habitually sue others over patents they did nothing to develop, and/or over which they have no intention of creating a product.
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