Of course, when your first business is co-founding Microsoft, you can afford to go on a little losing streak.

I'm not a lawyer but I'd say there has to be some merit to this. It's closer to his area of expertise or at least more so than the Blazers. There's always a chance it's related to being ill - fighting back, cloudy judgment, etc... - but this is too huge to go through without some basic feeling that you have a case.

The Rose Garden bankruptcy thing? That was like arguing with your caddy over the tip.

This lawsuit is probably his next Darius Miles, Shawn Kemp, or Martell Webster.

There is a reason Paul Allen is no longer affiliated with Microsoft. Bill Gates got rid of him early on. I have always predicted he would eventually loose all his billions. One could make a good comparison between Allen and Bunker Hunt, although Bunker is a little smarter.

Reminds me of when Apple tried to sue Microsoft for the "look and feel" of the Macintosh. Only to find out, it wasn't Apple that invented it. Xerox did. And after that lawsuit (which was found in Microsoft's favor), Xerox promptly sued Apple who was quickly forced to settle.

Must be the chemo treatments are fogging his brain...more than it is usually fogged up.

This reminds me of that character Michael Palin played in the Mr. Neuton skit, who eventually just cried:

"Surround everyone ... with everything we've got!"

"Bill Gates got rid of him early on."
My understanding was that he had health problems back in the early 80s and that had something to do with his diminished role but to imply he was the boyhood friend along for the ride isn't accurate. He was the key player in the beginning.
Besides, maybe if he had stayed my Windows 95 program wouldn't have frozen up so much. They called it Windows - I called it Drapes.

I think a federal judge will have more to say on whether the suit has merit.

If Mr. Allen prevails in the litigation, we will know that his suit was not frivolous. If he gets laughed out of district court, we'll know he was full of sh*t.

Wait a minute, in 1999 Al Gore was taking credit for the internet, how come Paul Allen didn't hit him with a lawsuit then?

http colon //www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/g/goreinternet.htm

This is just another proxy lawsuit for Microsoft, just like the SCO v. World+dog lawsuit of ~4 years ago.

You'll notice that included in the named defendants is every company running a profitable search enterprise on the Internet, except Microsoft / Bing.

MachineSaidFred: Nice point.

I'd note that the "Sue everybody" business model didn't work out for The SCO Group/Caldera.

Reminds me of when Apple tried to sue Microsoft for the "look and feel" of the Macintosh. Only to find out, it wasn't Apple that invented it. Xerox did. And after that lawsuit (which was found in Microsoft's favor), Xerox promptly sued Apple who was quickly forced to settle.

Wrong, Windows fanboy. First, they sued both HP and Microsoft. Second, The Xerox case was thrown out--there was no "forced to settle".

Lastly, Apple licensed some things to Microsoft, who promptly modified them slightly and delivered them as "Windows". Even Microsoft has admitted to doing so. The reason the Apple lawsuit failed wasn't because Apple's case didn't have merit, or that what they claimed wasn't true--the lawsuit failed because the court didn't have a clue how to handle this new relatively new kind of case.

In the end, Microsoft and Apple made a few deals that closed the matter. Now, many years later, Microsoft still makes the same, crappy operating system. Apple doesn't even make most of its money from computers anymore, and designs products that make Microsoft products look like clowns were hired as summer interns and given crayons.

The SCO case had no merit either, and is still dragging on and on and on and on... This one will probably go for many years.

Other problem, the company doing the suing doesn't actually make anything, so it'll be about impossible to force them into some sort of cross-licensing deal. (Which seems to be the way tech patent suits are typically resolved.) The defendants of this may need to invalidate the patents to win, which is a nasty uphill climb as i understand it.