Paul Allen, the Co-founder of Microsoft and the owner of the Interval Research’s patent, has sued Facebook, Google, AOL, eBay, Apple, Yahoo, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Yahoo and YouTube, as well as more other Companies which, according to Allen’s claims, have violated the IR patents that control the online trading. These 4 patents are those of search, multimedia, screen activities and database management. The Interval Research (IR) is basically research information, communications and computer science systems.

David Postman, Allen’s Spokesman, announced that the lawsuit was filed on Friday in the U. S. District Court of the Western District of Washington, explaining to the public the reasons behind the whole lawsuit. The reasons can be summed in one, which is protecting customers from being manipulated. The lawsuits handle mainly with Companies using their websites to add ‘recommendations’, in the form of different stories, apart from the one that the user is already reading, yet related to it.

A Spokesman from Facebook, Andrew Noyes, "We believe this suit is completely without merit and we will fight it vigorously".

Experts justified why Amazon is not on the list saying that it is ‘obvious’ as Amazon’s headquarters is in fact in Allen’s owned building.