Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed a patent case against some of the major internet and technology companies, including Google, Apple and Facebook, the Financial Times reports. The case was filed in the federal court in Seattle and marks an attempt to enforce a set of patents on a range of internet activities. Among the eleven companies named in the suit are AOL and Ebay and office supply companies such as Office Depot and Staples. The lawsuit was brought by Interval Licensing, a company set up to exploit the rights from technology research and development financed by Allen. Allen's spokesman said that the Interval group, which was closed in 2000, was awarded over 300 patents for technologies. The claim, which seeks damages and an injunction to prevent future infringement, names four patents awarded between 2000 and 2004. One of the technologies covers a way to present offers to internet users while they are looking at related items, a common technique used by e-commerce companies that are trying to cross-sell extra products. Another deal include a technique for combining video and text from different sources on to a single web page, an approach that underpins many web services that draw on multiple sources of content. Amazon, along with Microsoft, was not named in the lawsuit, despite Amazon's use of recommendations to cross-sell products. Allen's spokesman said Allen is not an investor in Amazon. He declined to say why the e-commerce company had not been included in the suit.
