Jason Dunn
08-28-2010, 01:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385241453119382.html?mod=e2tw' target='_blank'>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...2.html?mod=e2tw</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"They're the everyday fixtures of the Internet experience: pop-up stock quotes on a website, suggestions for related reading near a news article, videos along the side of your screen. Now, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen says he owns the technology behind all these ideas, and he's demanding that some of the world's top Web companies pay up to use them."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1282952466.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p><em>Above: He's the dude with the beard.</em></p><p>I've come down hard on patent trolls before, and though I have respect for Allen as the co-founder of Microsoft, the patents he's suing eBay, Google, Facebook, and others for seem like they have the whiff of troll on them. Check them out:</p><p><em>U.S. PATENT NO. 6,263,507:Allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they're currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social-networking sites. (Accused violators: AOL, Apple, eBay, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, YouTube)</em></p><p><em>U.S. PATENT NO. 6,034,652, U.S. PATENT NO. 6,788,314:Enables ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user's main activity. (AOL, Apple, Google, Yahoo)</em></p><p><em>U.S. PATENT NO. 6,757,682:Allows readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject, among other things. (AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, YouTube)</em></p><p>Do those seem like true innovations to you? Or more like obvious evolutions of previously established technologies? Should software even be patentable at all?</p>