October 26, 2010 2:11 PM

Google's White & Case Team Leads Defense Charge Against Paul Allen's E-Commerce Patent Suit

Posted by Andrew Longstreth

From The Am Law Litigation Daily

Remember Paul Allen's audacious throw down to the entire Internet industry? Back in August, the billionaire former Microsoft executive's dot-com era think tank, Interval Licensing, accused 11 e-commerce giants of infringing four patents essential to browsing and online retail technologies.

The job of leading the charge against Allen's Seattle federal district court suit seems to have fallen to Google, which doesn't even have the deepest pockets, in terms of market cap, among the defendants; Google's $195 billion is dwarfed by Apple's $280 billion. Nevertheless, most of the defendants have joined a motion to dismiss filed by Google's lawyers at White & Case. The filing, first reported by TechFlash, argues that Interval's suit doesn't meet the pleading standards established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly.

"Interval's recycling of identical (and generic) bases for infringement for each defendant so accused, all of which have distinct and in many cases competing products and services, cannot possibly satisfy the pleadings standard under Iqbal and Twombly," wrote Google's lawyers.

Oddly, considering the number of codefendants that joined its motion to dismiss, Google also filed a motion to be severed from the rest of the defendants, arguing that the case presents no factual basis for tying them together.

White & Case partner Kevin McGann, an attorney for Google, declined to comment.

Interval counsel Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey also declined to comment.

Among the other firms appearing for defendants in the case are O'Melveny & Myers (Apple); Cooley (Facebook); and Morrison & Foerster (Yahoo!). Our California sibling The Recorder has a rundown of all involved parties and their lawyers -- click here.

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