Tech firms including Apple, Yahoo and Google have been granted a temporary reprieve in a patent infringement case filed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
A US district court has thrown out a lawsuit filed by Allen’s Interval Licensing in August out, claiming it did not give enough detail on the four patents infringed, but left the door open for a fresh suit with more specific information.
The case was dismissed on December 10, and Allen has until December 28 to bring more details to the table, Bloomberg reports.
Interval Licensing claimed eleven tech firms breached patents covering automatic generation of lists of similar items on e-commerce sites, and generation of peripheral elements – all of which are considered essential to the running of online search and commerce websites.
The lawsuit also named eBay, Facebook, AOL, Netflix, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples and YouTube.
Allen will issue a fresh suit with more information on which of the firm’s products infringe the four patents, a spokesman told the BBC.