Slog tipper Vlad alerts us to a very interesting new lawsuit:
A firm run by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen is suing Apple Inc., Google Inc. and 9 other companies alleging they are violating patents developed at a Silicon Valley lab Mr. Allen financed more than a decade ago.
Mr. Allen, 57, Friday through his firm Interval Licensing LLC filed suit in federal court in Seattle asserting the companies are using technology from his laboratory. Named in the suit, along with Apple and Google, are AOL Inc., eBay Inc., Facebook Inc., Netflix Inc., Office Depot Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Staples Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Google’s YouTube subsidiary.
The suit doesn’t name Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. or other technology firms in Seattle where Mr. Allen is based. The suit doesn’t estimate a damage amount.
The suit alleges violation of four patents that mostly have to do with internet recommendation technology. This could get ugly.
I described some of this technology in copywritten articles that are on file in the US Library of Congress way before then.
Why was a patent issued when it was based on someone else’s work?
@1, this might be your best yet.
Wasn’t Windows ripped off from Apple?
Bad artists copy, great artists steal.
– Pablo Picasso
@3, no, not really. The WIMP (window, icon, mouse, pointer) components of each were both ripped off from work at Xerox PARC.
The Library of Congress has never heard of Will in Seattle, needless to say. He does have a couple of entries in OCLC Worldcat, which is funny — a “book”, entitled “Old Gnomic Convention”, which appears to be some sort of D&D game instructions (copyright 1983 by William C S Affleck Asch Lowe, Trail, BC); a “magazine” entitled “C.F. Machiavelli” (also 1983, a zine?), an “ebook” (all of seven pages long) called “Introduction to Feminism and the Net”, from his time with the Washington chapter of NOW (which might explain why there currently is no Washington chapter of NOW), and rather hilariously an article entitled “What Follow-Up Studies Say About Postschool Life for Young Men and Women with Learning Disabilities”, though it doesn’t say what his role in the article is.
Oddly there don’t seem to be any articles about inventing the internet.
Mice should be wooden like they’re supposed to be.
Most writers publish under many names. You have only scratched the surface of my omnipresence, Fnarf. You even missed all the music APAs from way back then.
You are undoubtedly the biggest knob of all time.
No, most writers, particularly technical writers, don’t publish under many names; they maintain consistency so that people can follow their citations. I’m not chasing your bullshit down any further, Will; it’s not worth the effort. I’m not interested in “music APAs” or your furry fanfic. But I don’t need to in order to know that you never described any patentable technology in any papers.
“Copywritten articles”? You mean you traced over them, like Newkirk in Hogan’s Heroes? I am so impressed!
Not everyone only had one legal name. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why most women writers publish under a pen name.
Can you imagine trying to keep track of Elizabeth Taylor in her many incarnations?
@8,
While confusing copyrighting with copywriting is pretty fucking hilarious, copywriting is actually a thing.
@9, huh? Elizabeth Taylor is pretty easy to keep track of. And she’s not a writer (a few trashy bios aside). Unless you mean the other Elizabeth Taylor, the outstanding British novelist, who wrote under her own name, like almost all women writers. I have no idea where you get this idea that “most” use pseudonyms.
Which also has fuck-all to do with why YOU claim to have written — well, something, apparently, beyond your seven-page Magnum Opus (Christ, I’ve written Slog comments longer than that) — under some other name than your own.
Copywrite vs. copyright is just bonus WiS dumbfuckery. You are a nonsensical person.
@3: Yes, yes it was. But Apple stole it from Xerox, as noted.
In fact, both Microsoft and Apple have a long history of pretty much ripping off other people, including the taxpayer, to get where they are.
@10, I think it was more that he decided “copyrighted” sounded wrong, and went for “copywritten.”
I thought Al Gore invented the internet.
You’re all wrong; Jesus Christ gave us the internet and everything having to do with computers. And it works through His glorious will.
Shout glory!!
Maybe a patent infringement trial can be held on Allen’s private super yacht that has an 8-story marble courthouse rising above its bowling alley and helicopters and submarine base. Who’s game for jury duty?