Another article on this: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/08/microsoft-cofounder-drops-patent-bomb-on-apple-google-facebook.ars

you are fast, I just got this as an “email bulletin”, went to BE, and you had already posted it. :-)

If Allen wins, maybe he’ll go deeper into the luxury tax.

that CP3 is going to be acquired by the Blazers

Is Blazersedge on that list?

—Dave

what will happen if PA wins?

LAME….

If he really spent 100 million developing code that all those companies made billions off of, why should he not get a piece? I understand that there are a lot of people out there that don’t believe in copywrite or patents on information technologies, but don’t people deserve to have the things they create from being stolen?
    Some people are down on anything a lawyer does, and yes they do some bad things. We need to fix a lot of things. But how about we go ahead an establish a business climate like Russia? Just buy the courts, steal whatever you want, and the guy that’s best at intimidation and murder wins and gets rich off the ideas of others?
    I’m sure Paul Allen and others that are rich deserve what they have, they have worked harder, and smarter, than most of us. They also seem to be pretty damn altruistic compared to many wealthy people.

Suing people over intellectual property is the responsibilty of every American. Hang your heads.

Go Paul. Go Paul. It’s your birthday. It’s your birthday.

If I was worth $13,500,000,000 or whatever, I’d be too busy drinking and partying like a rockstar to care about this kind of stuff.

That’s just me, though.

and produced even a rough model of how it should work, which was then taken and adapted or developed further by Google and all the rest of the listed defendents, then PA has every right to get compensation, especially if those businesses used those early versions in their products without compensating PA’s company.

People are jumping to conclusions and not reading the article as far as I can tell. Paul Allen actually started a company which came up with the concept and developed it to a point. Other companies co-opted the product, his company lost a competitive advantage from either unauthorized use or unpaid royalties and that is what he is suing for.

The class warfare crap is needless. Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a right to protecting his property. Most of the negative comments I’ve seen on here and on wired.com are all based in the idea that rich people somehow shouldn’t have the right to stop leeches from sucking the life out of their investments. After all, they’re rich and I’m not. If my buddy refuses to pay me back for the lunch I bought him last week I’ll sulk and complain to my co-worker, but let the company owner lose millions and I couldn’t care less.

That’s an attitude that I would request you explain enthusiastically to your next potential employer. Please, as a small business owner, I really do want to hear how you couldn’t care less about business owner’s rights before I pay you one red cent in payroll. I’d definitely want to hear it before I gave you access to my safe or any significant responsibilities beyond cleaning my toilets and taking out the trash because in my estimation, people shouldn’t be trusted with jobs that don’t match their attitude towards others.

LINK

I heard somewhere he invented the internet.

you’re bound to catch something! Great business move by Paul Allen. In such a litigious society such as ours – Allen’s move is logical.