Subject:

Patents

  • Blogs

    April 24, 2012

    Seven Other Things Facebook Should Totally Buy

    Yesterday it was announced that Facebook had agreed to purchase roughly 650 former AOL patents from Microsoft at a cost of $550 million. The announcement comes not long after Microsoft purchased a total 925 AOL patents and patent applications from AOL for a whopping $1 billion.

  • Blogs

    December 9, 2011

    Should Food Lovers Care That Nathan Myhrvold is a Patent Troll?

    ​Over at the Daily Weekly yesterday, Caleb Hannan called out Slate for celebrating Nathan Myhrvold as a catalyst for innovation without mentioning upfront that the former Microsoft exec is a known patent troll. While Slate's Jacob Weisberg says interview outtakes addressing the issue will surf ... More >>

  • Blogs

    December 8, 2011

    Slate Interviews Nathan Myhrvold About Innovation, Fails to Mention He's Stifling It

    ​"Nathan Myhrvold is a connoisseur of innovation." So begins the introduction to Slate's four-part interview with the former-Microsoft-executive-turned-patent-troll, which could double as an instructional video on how to avoid the pink-haired elephant in the room.

  • Blogs

    November 23, 2011

    Intellectual Ventures Trolls for Patents, Now You Can Troll for Intellectual Ventures

    Nathan Myhrvold's demonic creation Intellectual Vultures--I mean Ventures--is often accused of patent trolling. Here's your chance to Troll 'em back!

  • Blogs

    October 11, 2011

    Amazon's Kindle Fire Gets Its Very First Patent Lawsuit

    ​Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet has now taken perhaps its largest step toward being recognized as a legitimate player in the computer gadget wars.

  • Blogs

    October 6, 2011

    Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold's Patent Trolling Firm, Adds Yet Another Lawsuit (Motorola) to the Licensing Legal Scrum

    What do you call it when a company that doesn't actually make a product sues a company that does make a product, claiming that the product that was made is owned by the company that didn't make it? For former Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold,l you call it an average weekday.

  • Blogs

    August 12, 2011

    Jeff Bezos Applies for Smartphone Airbag Patent, Over Thinks Things

    ​Sometimes thinking like a genius has its advantages. And sometimes it just makes you forget that there are much simpler solutions to some of life's more mundane problems. Take the problem of cell phones. Or, more specifically, the fact that while they have become ever more central to our liv ... More >>

  • Blogs

    June 9, 2011

    i4i Triumphs Over Microsoft in Landmark Supreme Court Case

    ​The old David & Goliath metaphor was invented for cases like this.

  • Blogs

    May 4, 2011

    Apple's Steve Wozniak Tells Paul Allen to Stop His "Patent-Troll Thing"

    ​Apple's "other guy" co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Microsoft's "other guy" co-founder Paul Allen. And it has nothing to do with urging him to buy another yacht or sports team.

  • Blogs

    March 22, 2011

    Microsoft, Despite Making No Tablet Computers, Sues Barnes & Noble for Patent Infringement Over Its Nook Tablet

    ​Sure, Microsoft doesn't actually make any form of tablet computer. But as anyone who follows the company will tell you, it owns the licensing rights to everything imaginable, including several tablet designs. Now Barnes & Noble is finding out what happens when a piece of technology sold by a ... More >>

  • Blogs

    March 10, 2011

    Microsoft Asks Court to Toss Apple's "App Store" Trademark Case Because Font Is Too Small

    ​Microsoft is leaving nothing to chance with its attempts to keep Apple from trademarking the term "App Store." In fact, the Redmond company's lawyers just filed a motion with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to have Apple's trademark filing stricken because . . . wait for it . . . the fon ... More >>

  • Blogs

    January 6, 2011

    Microsoft Wants to Patent "Liking" Things

    ​If you haven't picked up on this already, life for the modern corporate giant involves a whole lot of time creating, buying, defending, and suing the pants off people over patents. In Microsoft's case, they've been on a bit of a bad streak lately, with folks successfully suing them left and r ... More >>

  • Blogs

    January 5, 2011

    More Patent Infringment Woes For Microsoft

    ​Microsoft can't swing a dead IP protocol these days without hitting a patent infringement lawsuit. First there was i4i, the software company that successfully sued them for ripping off their HTML editing software. Now another company, Uniloc Inc., has been given new life for a previous lawsui ... More >>

  • Blogs

    December 30, 2010

    Paul Allen Still Determined to Sue the Internet

    ​Microsoft co-founder and 400-foot yacht-owner Paul Allen is determined to sue the pants off the internet. Well, maybe not the entire internet, per se, but rather a bevy of the biggest companies around that use it.

  • Blogs

    December 29, 2010

    Microsoft Gets 141 New Enemies in Upcoming Supreme Court Case

    ​It's not just the i4i development firm that thinks Microsoft stole a bit of editing technology that ended up in an older version of Word. Besides several lower courts that think so too, 141 other smaller companies just signed a brief in support of i4i (no word if they picked the 141 number fo ... More >>

  • Blogs

    December 9, 2010

    Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold's Sleeping Patent Troll, Wakes Up, Files First Lawsuits

    ​As the co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, the patent-hoarding Bellevue firm he started in 2000 after leaving Microsoft nearly a billion dollars richer, Nathan Myhrvold has always insisted that a courthouse is the last place he wants to be. "Litigation is a huge failure," he told Businesswee ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 1, 2010

    Steve Wozniak Has Paul Allen's Back

    ​Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is getting a lot of well-deserved flak for the patent-infringement lawsuits that pit him against basically every major tech player in the world. Allen, in short, is claiming credit for some very basic functions of the web. But in an interview with Bloomberg, Ap ... More >>

  • Blogs

    August 27, 2010

    Paul Allen Sues Everyone, Claims He Patented the Internet

    ​Al Gore may have invented the internet, but Paul Allen holds the patent. That's the absurd claim Microsoft's former co-founder is making in a lawsuit that names Apple, Google, Facebook and nearly every big name in the tech world (with two notable exceptions which we'll get to in a second). So ... More >>

  • Calendar

    August 4, 2010

    11/100

    ​Al Gore may have invented the internet, but Paul Allen holds the patent. That's the absurd claim Microsoft's former co-founder is making in a lawsuit that names Apple, Google, Facebook and nearly every big name in the tech world (with two notable exceptions which we'll get to in a second). So ... More >>

  • Music

    August 4, 2010

    Q&A: Jeff Kleinsmith

    Sub Pop's art director talks about graphic design in the age of iTunes and Contra.

  • Blogs

    August 3, 2010

    Sub Pop's Art Director On VW's Contra, 8-Way Santa, and Posters With Free Albums

    Patent Pending Industries​In the 11 years that longtime Sub Pop art director Jeff Kleinsmith and partner and former Sub Popper Jesse LeDoux have been operating their rock poster company, Patent Pending Industries, a thing or two has changed about the music business. Albums are increasingly tr ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 28, 2010

    Would You Buy A CD Without A CD? What About A Poster That Came With A Download Of the Album? Sub Pop's Thinking About It

    How much would you pay for this poster if it came with the new Yeasayer album?​Patent Pending​Patent Pending​This morning I had a chance to sit down with Jeff Kleinsmith, Sub Pop's longtime art director, and co-owner of Patent Pending Industries, the rock poster boutique that's cel ... More >>

  • Blogs

    August 12, 2009

    It's a Federal Judge's Word vs. Microsoft's

    Contraband?​If a federal judge says that Microsoft can't sell Microsoft Word anymore, will Microsoft have to stop selling it? Probably not, it seems. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis issued an injunction--to take effect in 60 days--prohibiting Microsoft from selling any versi ... More >>

  • News

    June 10, 2009

    Seattle’s Swordsman of Semen Detection

    Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.

  • Blogs

    June 25, 2006

    Rethinking Wealth

    Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.

  • News

    November 14, 2001

    Back in hiding

    Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.

  • News

    March 15, 2000

    Choose your evil

    Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.

  • News

    March 8, 2000

    Patently absurd

    Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.

  • News

    January 5, 2000

    Best of the rest

    Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.

  • News

    November 3, 1999

    Patently mine

    The US Patent office has opened the door to all kinds of new patent claims. Microsoft and Amazon are in the first test cases.

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