Edible Apple

After suing Apple and 10 other major tech companies such as Google and eBay for alleged patent infringement, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen had his lawsuit, initially filed this past August, dismissed for being too vague. Not surprisingly, Apple and the slew of other defendants had submitted motions asking the court to dismiss Allen’s claims on account of them being too broad.

Apple’s motion read in part,

Interval has sued eleven major corporations and made the same bald assertions that each defendant infringes 197 claims in four patents. As the U.S. Supreme Court noted in Twombly, it is in this type of situation in which courts should use their ‘power to insist upon some specificity in pleading before allowing a potentially massive factual controversy to proceed.

In the wake of Allen’s lawsuit, which was curious due to the vagueness of the claims and the most obvious question of all – why the hell is Allen even involved with this nonsense, IP Watchdog took aim at Allen.

Many in the technology sector are wondering what Paul Allen is doing and why he is bringing this lawsuit, which to me seems rather naive. As discussed more fully below, it seems to me that Mr. Allen is attempting to enter the deep, dark world of patent trolls. The tell-tale sign being a complaint without any substantive information and naked recitation of a variety of patents that have “one or more” unspecified claims being infringed for unspecified reasons.

Allen doesn’t appear willing to go down without a fight as a spokesman of his told the WSJ that “The case is staying on track.” Delusion much?

Still, Allen can, and most likely will refile an ammended complaint and has until December 28th to do so.

via WSJ