Judge Dismisses Paul Allen Patent Lawsuit Against Apple, Google

Paul Allen's wide-ranging patent lawsuit against Apple, Google and nine other tech giants

Allen and his company Interval Licensing LLC filed the lawsuit in August against Apple, Google, Google subsidiary YouTube, FaceBook, eBay, Yahoo, AOL, Netflix, Staples, OfficeMax and Office Depot. The lawsuit alleged that the 11 companies violated four patents held by Interval Research, a now-defunct technology incubator that closed several years ago.

The patents in question include technologies related to Web browsers, alerts and display devices. The vaguely worded patents include inventions such as "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data;" "Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device;" and "Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest."

But U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman dismissed the lawsuit last Friday, arguing Interval Licensing's complaint didn't specify which of the defendants' products infringed on Interval Research's intellectual property. Pechman gave Allen's company until Dec. 28 to file an amended complaint.

David Postman, a spokesman for Allen, told The Wall Street Journal that Interval Licensing plans to move forward with the patent lawsuit."The case is staying on track," Postman said, adding that the judge's decision was merely a "procedural issue."