Microsoft co-founder Allen sues Apple, others over patents

Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, has sued Apple and ten other companies claiming they infringe on technology patents awarded to his Interval Research Corp. think tank. The Wall Street Journal reports that while Allen didn’t develop any of the technology himself, he does own the patents, which cover automatic suggestions for shopping sites, automatic location of related stories on a news site, and the presentation of information such as ads, stock quotes, news updates, or videos on a computer screen, in the periphery of the user’s main activity. Allen’s suit names Apple, as well as Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and Google’s YouTube subsidiary; unsurprisingly, Microsoft is missing from the list, as Allen remains a major investor in the Redmond, WA-based company.