Paul Allen's First Attempt At Patent Trolling Flops As He Forgets To Say Who Actually Violated What And How

from the it's-the-details-that-count dept

Mon, Dec 13th 2010 2:46am — Mike Masnick

A lot of folks were pretty surprised back in August when Paul Allen jumped into the patent trolling game, using patents from his failed-over-a-decade-ago research firm, Interval Research, to sue Google, Apple, Facebook, eBay and others over some rather basic concepts. In his first attempt at patent trolling, however, it appears that he forgot to read the patent litigation rulebook. The lawsuit has been dismissed for failure to explain what the various companies actually did that was infringing. Of course, this is not the end of the lawsuit, as he's free to file an amended complaint (which he almost certainly will), but it certainly suggests some rather sloppy lawyering, which could be an indication of what's to come.

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Filed Under: patents, paul allen
Companies: apple, ebay, facebook, google, interval research

6 Comments

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cgt (profile), 13 Dec 2010 @ 5:09am

There is only one thing to say at times like this: EPIC FAIL!
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fogbugzd (profile), 13 Dec 2010 @ 5:29am

Failure is always an option.
It may not be sloppy layering. He may be going for a presettlement. His lawyers may have known that they had such a weak claim that they didn't want to state it explicitly. A lot of IP lawsuits are based on the hope that the defendants will think it is cheaper to settle than it is to fight.

If the plaintiffs had too pay the defendant's legal fees on summary judgments there would be a lot fewer on these lawsuits no matter whether they were due to a weak case or sloppy lawyering.
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Johnny, 13 Dec 2010 @ 6:31am

Funny
Funny I first read: "Paul Allen's First Attempt To Patent Trolling..."

Come to think of it, if you "improved" the trolling process maybe you could patent patent trolling as a business process? Then there could only be one patent troll...
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- IronM@sk, 14 Dec 2010 @ 7:42am
  
  Re: Funny
  ...to rule them all,
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pringerX (profile), 13 Dec 2010 @ 10:24am

For every successful patent troll, there are probably a dozen miserable failures. What's worrisome is that there are successful ones at all.
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I-Blz, 13 Dec 2010 @ 10:39am

Mike, Could you make a new file for patent trolling, or rename the patent one for patent trolling? That is all.
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