Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen lodged a patent suit Friday against AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google subsidiary YouTube.

Microsoft is noticeably not named and reportedly has no license to the widgetry. It does own a piece of Facebook, however.

The motley 11 are charged with infringing four basic e-commerce and search patents that belong to the Allen-owned Interval Licensing LLC, all that remains of the now defunct Interval Research Corporation that Allen and David Liddle started in 1992 to do advanced next-generation R&D.

The lab at one point had a staff of 110 leading scientists, physicists and engineers, guys like the co-creators of the Chaos Theory and TCP/IP, the inventor of the first laptop computer and the designer of the first mass-produced portable.

The suit points out that Interval also underwrote other people's research like the research Sergey Brin and Larry Page did that resulted in Google.

Allen now means to collect on at least some of the 300 patents Interval amassed. The suit asks for damages and an injunction. It reserves the right to allege willfulness after discovery and demand treble damages.

Google was first out with a rebuff saying, "This lawsuit against some of America's most innovative companies reflects an unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace. Innovation - not litigation - is the way to bring to market the kinds of products and services that benefit millions of people around the world."

Of course, Allen, who will be branded a troll by many, will retort that he provided the innovation.

To blunt the troll smear Allen's spokesman David Postman said in a prepared statement, "Interval Research was an early, ground-breaking contributor to the development of the Internet economy. Interval has worked hard to bring its technologies to market through spinning off new companies, technology transfer arrangements and sales of its patented technology....This lawsuit is necessary to protect our investment in innovation. We are not asserting patents that other companies have filed, nor are we buying patents originally assigned to someone else. These are patents developed by and for Interval."

Except for Facebook, the other 10 of the defendants allegedly tread on Interval patent 6,263,507 entitled "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data." That's patent-speak for activities like finding stories on a particular topic.

AOL, Apple, Google and Yahoo are also charged with infringing patents no. 6,034,652 and 6,788,314 both entitled "Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device." They cover those ads, news updates, stock quotes and video images that pop up next to the web content you're viewing.

All 11 companies are charged with infringing patent no. 6,757,682 entitled "Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest," those pointers you get on the web to related items you might be interested in, or at least other people were when they were there.

Allen is using Susman Godfrey, a killer IP law firm, to press his complaint, which was filed in district court in Seattle.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story.

The 15-page suit is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/36519710/Buley-Interval-vs-Complaint.