Paul Allen's monster patent attack hit by judge dismissal

A US district judge dropped a patent infringement lawsuit filed by a company associated with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen last Friday. Interval Licensing LLC, which is the patent arm of Interval Research, brought a far-reaching complaint against Google’s YouTube, Apple, Facebook, eBay, Netflix, AOL, Yahoo!, Office Depot, …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

THEY USE COMPUTERS!!!!

and I patented that!!!!!!!!! YEARS AGO!!!!

CaPItaliZe RandOmLY!!

[Destroy All Monsters]

"The allegations in the complaint are spartan"

What?

A page with "WAAAHH!" in Times Roman 50 Bold is not enough?

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Umm

Spartan not Roman :-)

[Marcus Aurelius]

They can't be spartan

There are only 4, not 300

[Dazed and Confused]

Prior art

Surely no Silicon Valley start up is old enough to have pre-dated the Spartans so can't they claim prior art?

[Lars]

Greed

Seems to me the richer you get the greedier you get, funny in a way, really.

Greed and stupidity close together too.

Perhaps we should consider death as a blessing after all.

[Kubla Cant]

Greed and stupidity

If you've ever had the misfortune to work closely with a self-made millionaire, you'll recognise this mindset:

- They think all the money in the world really belongs to them and the only reason they haven't got it is because of some administrative mixup

- They are too stupid to know what's impossible. This is often the secret of their first big break. It's also the reason the rest of us aren't rich, and the answer to the question "If you're so clever, why aren't you rich?"

[Daniel 1]

I don't think it's greed

Paul Allen has, himself, given away almost all his wealth to charity. This no doubt still leaves him with more than enough 'spare' cash to still be able to spend on anything he can think of (or at least anything, that any of US, could think of: anyone know a man with a spaceship, for sale?) but his billions are no longer his.

So what is the motivation, if it's not the acquisition of further wealth? Well, I suspect it's a sort of obstructive self-justification. An assertion of relevance, in a world that is already forgetting them.

A man can spend his whole life trying to change the world, but if he succeeds before his life is ended, he will then often apply his remaining time to stopping it from changing any further. He has nothing new to offer, but he wants everyone to keep admiring what he did.

Really, you'd hope that those who assert the patents on 'thinking about things', would have thought of something useful to do with them - but it is the fate of liberal revolutions to turn into oppressive establishments.

"We thought of that first!"

"Realy, then why didn't you do something about it?"

"Well... it would have eaten into our revenue stream."

But don't worry - he's dumped his $31 billion into charity. He has no solution to the world's ills, but his conscience is clean.

[JaitcH]

Guess what someone's doing for Christmas?

In many jurisdictions judges like to keep docket bare over the Christmas period so they, and the lawyers, can escape to the ski slopes or beaches.

I'm sure the plaintiff's lawyers can read the message.

[Tom 13]

I guess their paperwork was in slightly better shape than ACS:LAW.

But I hope it eventually gets filed in the same bin.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/10/acslaw_court_fail/

[T J]

On track, like a train on fire

I guess its still on track after its been blown to smithereens and the wreckage is speeding on fire uncontrolled down the tracks and being diverted to a safe siding where it will be allowed to crash peacefully into a sandpile. So long as the bogies stay on the track.

[Pal Sahota]

Copyright infringement

I agree with Kubla Cant. My name is Pal Sahota and the company name is Pal Systems Ltd. My case is regarding Google being granted a 'patent' on instant search. This is the same technology I invented it in 1989 and I called it search-as-you-type. Google are calling it under a few names including Search-as-you-Type (SayT). This can be looked up by searching Google search-as-you-type including their demo video.

The name of search-as-you-type was coined by me and used as our branded product and this can be clearly seen in the newspaper articles in my blog at wordpress.com under searchasyoutype.

There are also two videos made in 1991 which can also be seen from this blog.

Watching these videos it can be clearly seen that the data is accessed in the same way as shown in the above Google demo!

My product Autodispens used search-as-you-type everywhere and not just for accessing data. I believe that every type of “real time parsing algorithm” application is covered in this extensive program and this was done in DOS and on the very first PC’s. Am I going to have to pay royalties to use my own product done in 1989!

Until 2008 software in the UK was not patentable but was automatically covered under the copyright law. Is the US undermining UK copyright laws! There are dozens of concepts that I have developed based on this. I am also on twitter under searchasyoutype.

[Hans 1]

@Pal Sahota

Then you should tell the US patent office of your "prior art" and demand royalties from Google!!!!

There you go, self-made millionaire!

[Pal Sahota]

Thank you for the advice

Thank you Hans 1 for the advice. I have been debating whether to contact Google direct or the US Patent office with regards to infringement or 'prior art'. If you Google search under Pal Sahota and search-as-you-type you get over 3 pages! I have been building up my profile in preparation. I notice from your comments that you have vast amount of software experience. Could you be an 'expert' witness for my case? If you feel you want to help me and get involved please post a comment on my blog (searchasyoutype.wordpress.com/about) so that I can contact you on your email address.