R&D firm sues Apple, eBay, Facebook and ...

Another day, another patent suit? Walker Digital, a company chaired by the founder of priceline.com, filed 15 patent suits Tuesday against more than 100 companies, including Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, WalMart, Groupon, Apple, Sony and Google.
Chairman Jay S. Walker said Walker Digital has more than 400 issued and pending U.S. and international patents, which the company has used to generate more than $200 million in licensing revenue.
The company was a bit vague on what products from Apple, Google, or others might infringe on Walker Digital's patents, saying simply that its solutions focus on "generating new solutions to business problems." A company spokesman declined further comment.
"A number of great companies can trace their genesis to technology that was first developed at Walker Digital in the mid-to-late 1990s. We are proud of our inventions and the number of innovative businesses and activities founded on these inventions," Walker said in a statement. "These businesses have not only changed the way people around the world live, work, travel and interact socially and commercially, but also have given rise to numerous American jobs."
Walker Digital was founded in 1994, and four years later, priceline.com launched.
Walker Digital CEO Jon Ellenthal said the company reached out to the companies named in the suit, but they were unresponsive or combative.
"We contacted these companies and urged them to come to the table. Some have been sitting down with us and we will continue to work with them outside the courtroom," Erich Spangenberg, CEO of IPNav, which is acting as Walker Digital's IP advisor, said in a statement. "But dozens of companies have responded with silence, indifference, delay or worse yet, by taking legal action against Walker Digital. Perhaps now we can start good faith negotiations."
"Our goals are two-fold," Walker concluded. "Obviously we want to realize a fair return on the use of our property. Who would want any less? But we also hope this effort will contribute to the process of moving the asset class of patents and Intellectual Property out of the stone age of litigation and into an efficient market which, in the end, would benefit America and its economy."
This is not Walker Digital's first foray into patent suits. The company sued Facebook last year over the technology it uses for "friending," which was the fourth patent suit it filed in over a year, according to PaidContent.
Walker has also sued Microsoft, Dell, and HP over Word and how it accesses the Web, Capital One over customizable credit accounts, and the Multi-State Lottery Association for infringing on a patent for processing lottery ticket sales.
The effort is similar to a patent battle currently being waged by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Allen sued Apple, Google, Facebook, and others in August on behalf of Interval Licensing LLC, which is part of Interval Research, the now defunct company founded in 1992 by Allen and David Liddle. The patents in question are "fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today," Allen's team said at the time. A Washington district judge dismissed Allen's patent case in December, but he filed an amended suit later that month.

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