From Ars Technica:

Paul Allen, entrepreneur and cofounder of Microsoft, has filed a lawsuit against 11 companies for infringements on his Web search patents. Announced on Friday afternoon, the suit names Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, and Microsoft partner Yahoo as defendants for violating four Interval Licensing LLC patents, though the court will likely have to weigh whether the patents in question are "obvious" or not.

The patents revolve around three main concepts: browser use for navigating through information, managing a user's peripheral attention while using a device, and alerting users to items of current interest. They collectively address the general concept of presenting searched-for information to a user along with related news articles, media (such as music or videos), status updates from friends, or data (such as stock or weather info).

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