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Allen v. World and Dog - First Amended Complaint - Updated

By Pamela Jones et al.

Paul Allen's Interval Licensing has met the deadline to file an amended complaint [PDF] with specificity. If you can read it without passing out laughing and/or having your head explode with disgust, I'd like to know what happened to you as a child that blunted your normal emotions.

No wonder he didn't want to be specific. This document is Exhibit A for why software patents are an oozing pimple on the nose of the US legal system. Interval is suing because it can, and it would like to be paid by anyone using the Internet in a normal way, and it can because the US Patent Office thought it was good policy to rubber stamp stupid software patents right and left, with the idea that they could be vetted in litigation.

And vetted they will be. But at what cost to the US economy? I can't believe any of these patents will survive intact. Normally, I'd ask you to look for prior art, but I see other, easier ways to toss them in the dumpster, so even if I weren't busy doing Comes v. Microsoft exhibits, I still wouldn't ask you to bother. Post any that you happen to know about, but I'm not asking unless one of the defendants specifically asks for us to do it.

Full post as published by Groklaw on December 29, 2010 (boomark / email).