Judge dismisses Allen's Apple patent violation lawsuit

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s patent trolling lawsuit filed against Apple, Facebook, Google, YouTube and others has been dismissed by the courts.

“Plaintiff has failed to identify the infringing products or devices with any specificity,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman in her order to dismiss. “The Court and Defendants are left to guess what devices infringe on the four patents.

Allen was claiming that the companies had violated four patents developed by Internal Research (a research firm he funded).

The two main patents were:

6,263,507, “Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data”

6,757,682, “Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest.”

Allen’s lawsuit had failed to make proper identification of instances of infringement. He has until December 28 to file an amended complaint.

A spokesman for Mr. Allen said it plans to do so soon, calling the judge’s order a “procedural issue” that won’t halt the case.

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