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Comment by ssp | Hacker News Reader

Maybe he is trying to destroy the patent system.

If you have valid patents that read on various valuable products, and you can bank roll a credible law suit asking for injunctions and not accepting any other kind of relief, that might create enough chaos to get the attention of law makers.

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I'll believe that when I see it. But it's a possibility.

The breadth of this is certainly something to give food for thought, this is not an 'ordinary' patent troll lawsuit.

Part of me has Paul Allen as a very nice and visionary guy and part of me reminds me that he didn't exactly distance himself from microsofts illegal practices during the Gates' years.

The fact that he is leaving out Microsoft and Amazon says to me that he is exactly what he appears to be: a complete troll.

Reading the headline, that was exactly my hope. The details make that appear unlikely, but it may be the result regardless.

Reminds me of the BlackBerry patent case a couple of years ago. The Department of Defense had to come in and say something like "hey, guys, the government uses so many BlackBerrys that if you slam an injunction on them and shut their US operations down, we're in deep trouble."

Whether that is his intent or not, we can hope that a consortium of the defendant/victim corporations might be able to launch some action (in-court or in-congress) to begin at last the patent-reform process.

Can you patent patents and then sue the patent office for patent violation? I hope so.

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