Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen sued several major Internet companies and three large retailers for patent infringement on Friday, asserting that four patents originating at Interval Research, Allen’s dot-com era think tank, cover basic web browsing and e-commerce technologies.
The lawsuit (pdf) was filed by Interval Licensing LLC, a patent-holding company owned by Allen, and names eleven companies as defendants: AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.
