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By Scott Nyman

Back in August, Interval Licensing LLC (“Interval”) initiated patent infringement litigation against tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, Yahoo, eBay, AOL, and others in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Early this past December, Judge Marsha Pechman dismissed the lawsuit for failure to specify which of the defendants’ products were actually infringing and set the deadline for an amended complaint to December 28, 2010. Now, still warm from the printer, we have all 35 pages Interval’s amended complaint for our reading enjoyment.

Interval, a company formed in 2000 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and former Xerox executive David Liddle, is the company that holds the intellectual properties of the former research company, Interval Research LLC. Interval Licensing now holds and manages a portfolio of patents in the areas of information systems, communications, and computer science.  Among Interval’s portfolio, it has selected four patents as the subjects of its current litigation.

Interval’s first patent of litigation is U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,507 to Ahmad, et al., titled “Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, with Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented by Audiovisual Data.” This patent deals with flexibly categorizing news events from multiple sources into a presentation that allows easy access for users and providing other relevant news events. Interval alleges a laundry list of Defendants’ websites that infringe on the ‘507 patent.

Interval’s next patents of litigation are U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,034,652 and 6,788,314 both to Freiberger, et al., titled “Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device.” This patent deals with unobtrusive notifications that inform a user of an event, which allow the user minimal interruption of their current workflow. Among the infringing technologies cited in the Complaint, Interval names: AOL, Google, and Yahoo Instant Messaging programs; Apple’s OSX Dashboard; Google’s Gmail Notifier; Google’s Android notification bar; and other notification systems.

Interval’s last patent of litigation is U.S. Pat. No. 6,757,682 to Naimark, et al., titled “Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest.” This patent deals with the real time notification that an item of current interest is available for access by a user. Here, Interval alleges its patents are infringed by: AOL Shopping websites; Apple iTunes, App Store, AppleTV, and Ping; eBay’s “watching” feature; Facebook’s “Like,” “newsfeed,” and other features; Google’s Orkut service, News service, and “Star” and “Buzz” features; Netflix’s “Movies You’ll Love;” website recommendations from Office Max, Office Depot, and Staples; YouTube’s feature of “liking” videos; and Yahoo’s “Buzzing” feature, shopping websites, and other various recommendation services.

Interval is not holding back, as it is going after some pretty high profile products and services of the named Defendants. Many of these allegedly infringing technologies are substantial parts of each Defendants’ business models. Most likely, the Defendants will assert that their respective actions are outside of the claimed invention of the named patents or that the named patents are invalid.

By the looks of things, this fight is about to heat up. I will continue to follow this case as it develops and keep our readers updated.

You can view the full complaint here.