Paul Allen Sues Apple, Google (And Nine Other Giants) Over Patents [Patents]

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has launched a salvo of litigation over disputed patents, targeting Apple, Google, AOL, and Netflix, among others. None of the patents involve technology Allen was answerable for creating, but were licensed through his Silicon Valley incubator.

The high profile legal assault relies on some vague ideas you’re surprised are patented within the first place, corresponding to having items suggested to you based on what you’re currently viewing, viewing related news stories, and the position of online advertisements for your peripheral vision. In other words, things which might be frequently everywhere in the entire internet.

A spokesman for Allen says ” Paul thinks it truly is important, not to simply him but to the researchers at Interval who created this technology…We recognize that innovation has a worth, and patents are how one can protect that.” But the question of what need to be deemed an ” innovation” remains an open, hotly-contested one.

In a NY Times op-ed last year, executive and Harvard Business School lecturer Robert Pozen argued for a major (and urgently needed) overhaul of the united states patent system. ” The quality of yankee patents has been deteriorating for years,” Pozen laments, claiming ” they’re increasingly issued for products and processes which might be not truly innovative.” Within the patent system, innovation is essential. The factors for a patent are that a new technology should be non-obvious to someone trained in that field, useful, and new. The decision of which patents have those properties and which don’t is up to the varying phalanxes of examiners, litigators, and judges, but an increasingly vocal faction thinks the whole system is broken. Patents-monopolies on ideas-aren’t being dished out deservedly, they say.

Pozen thinks five key reforms could fix the clunky system that he might say figures like Allen are exploiting: get more experts involved for examination, force applications into the public domain after 18 months, assist you to challenge patents once they’re granted,

[ WSJ ]

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This post is tagged: AND, Apple, giants, Patents, Paul, Sues