[adharmad]

Sad to see him become a Patent troll.

Also, what could be the point of such a lawsuit? Surely Paul Allen cannot think that he can have out-of-court settlements (no cross-licensing since his company does not produce anything) with all the listed companies. Some of them will surely fight back.

[jacquesm]

> Sad to see him become a Patent troll.

Yes, quite. Paul Allen had an excellent reputation up to this point. He always struck me as the one with the interesting projects, such as backing Burt Rutan.

> Some of them will surely fight back.

all of them will fight back.

[ssp]

Maybe he is trying to destroy the patent system.

If you have valid patents that read on various valuable products, and you can bank roll a credible law suit asking for injunctions and not accepting any other kind of relief, that might create enough chaos to get the attention of law makers.

[jacquesm]

I'll believe that when I see it. But it's a possibility.

The breadth of this is certainly something to give food for thought, this is not an 'ordinary' patent troll lawsuit.

Part of me has Paul Allen as a very nice and visionary guy and part of me reminds me that he didn't exactly distance himself from microsofts illegal practices during the Gates' years.

[SoftwareMaven]

The fact that he is leaving out Microsoft and Amazon says to me that he is exactly what he appears to be: a complete troll.

[TrevorBramble]

Reading the headline, that was exactly my hope. The details make that appear unlikely, but it may be the result regardless.

[koenigdavidmj]

Reminds me of the BlackBerry patent case a couple of years ago. The Department of Defense had to come in and say something like "hey, guys, the government uses so many BlackBerrys that if you slam an injunction on them and shut their US operations down, we're in deep trouble."

[FluidDjango]

Whether that is his intent or not, we can hope that a consortium of the defendant/victim corporations might be able to launch some action (in-court or in-congress) to begin at last the patent-reform process.

[astrodust]

Can you patent patents and then sue the patent office for patent violation? I hope so.

[dedward]

The only way they can fight back is to invalidate the patent or prove it doesn't apply to their situation.

And "patent trolls" tend to collect and file tons of almost meaninglessly broad patents and hten send armies of analysts and lawyers to look at them and find some small or big fish to sue, depending.

In this case, the patents were filed by Mr. Allen's venture itself, a venture created as a think-tank to do research and come up with ideas - which were then published (via the patent mechanism) for the world to see, and potentially license - all they had to do was keep an eye on the patent system and contact the right people to ask for a license.