It’s probably not going to be a very merry Christmas in the Allen home this year: On Friday, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen had a lawsuit against Apple and 10 other major tech companies dismissed for being too vague.
AppleInsider is reporting that Microsoft co-founder (and billionaire) Paul Allen’s controversial patent lawsuit against tech giants has hit a snag -- a judge dismissed the complaint on Friday for being “too vague in its allegations,” giving Allen and his attorneys until December 28 to file an amended complaint.
The suit was originally filed in August through Allen’s former Interval Research Corp., which claimed that Apple and 10 other tech giants “had infringed on four patents related to e-commerce and Internet search.” Among those also in Allen’s sights are Google, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL, who together with Apple filed a request to dismiss the charges in October, claiming the charges were too broad.
"Interval has sued eleven major corporations and made the same bald assertions that each defendant infringes 197 claims in four patents," Apple claimed in the October motion. "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.'"
As it turns out, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed, siding with all of the defendants and dismissing Allen’s original complaint on Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The allegations in the complaint are spartan,” Judge Pechman wrote, allowing Allen until December 28 to “file a more specific complaint.”
Allen’s spokespeople shot back quickly, calling the dismissal “a procedural issue” and claiming “the case is staying on track.”
The dismissal likely comes as good news to Apple, who is embroiled in plenty of their own patent dispute drama these days with the likes of Nokia, HTC and Motorola, both as plaintiff and defendant.
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