Patents
Interval Research was issued approximately 130 US patents. Four of its patents, now owned by Allen's Interval Licensing LLC, are the subject of a patent infringement lawsuit Interval Licensing filed in August 2010 against AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo!, and YouTube (but not Microsoft):
- US 6034652 : "Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device". View Patent Landscape Map.
- US 6788314 : "Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device (continuation)". View Patent Landscape Map.
- US 6263507 : "Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data". View Patent Landscape Map.
- US 6757682 : "Alerting users to items of current interest". View Patent Landscape Map.
The lawsuit also points out that Interval Research was credited by Google in 1998 as an "outside collaborator" and one of the companies that funded research by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page that resulted in Google. On Mar. 3, 2011, Article One Partners announced that one of the patents held by Interval Licensing would be posted to their online community to utilize Public participation in patent examination. The patent in question was U.S. Patent No. 6,263,507, defined as "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data."
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