A tech licensing company controlled by Paul Allen is suing eleven Internet and retail giants — including Google, Apple, Facebook, Office Depot, Yahoo, YouTube, Netflix and eBay — alleging that they're violating patents on “fundamental web technologies” developed by Interval Research, the now-defunct Silicon Valley lab that Allen created with Xerox PARC veteran David Liddle in the 1990s.

Noticeably absent from the list is Microsoft, which Allen founded with Bill Gates. Also missing is Amazon.com, the Seattle e-commerce giant that just moved into a new headquarters campus developed by Allen’s Vulcan Inc. in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.

The allegations are laid out in a complaint filed in federal court in Seattle this morning by Allen’s Interval Licensing LLC, identified as the current holder of Interval Research’s patents. Update: Here's a copy of the complaint: PDF, 15 pages.

[Follow-up: A closer look at the patents at issue in the case]

The suit puts a particular spotlight on the lab’s role as an early source of funding and collaboration for search giant Google. One of the attached exhibits is a screenshot of a September 1998 version of Google’s “About” page, which identified Interval as an outside collaborator along with the IBM Almaden Research Center, and as a source of research funding along with the NSF, NASA and DARPA.

The full list of defendants: AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Paul Allen

A total of four Interval Research patents are cited in the complaint, which seeks unspecified monetary damages for alleged patent infringement. In a statement this morning, Allen’s firm calls the patents at issue in the suit “fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today.”

The patents cited in the suit include one for a “Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data” (USPTO 6,263,507); two patents for an “Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device” (USPTO 6,034,652 and 6,788,314) and one for "Alerting users to items of current interest.” (USPTO 6,757,682).

We're reaching out to the companies for comment, and we'll provide updates as we receive responses.

Update, 1:30 p.m. Facebook said in a statement, "We believe this suit is completely without merit and we will fight it vigorously."

The social network is alleged to be violating one of the four patents cited in the suit. Some of the other defendants are alleged to be violating multiple patents.

Follow-up: Google chides Allen over lawsuit

The suit says Interval won some 300 patents in less than a decade of existence. The lab closed in 2000, after coming under pressure to develop more marketable products from its research projects.

“Starting with Mr. Allen, Mr. Liddle, and a handful of scientists and inventors, Interval Research evolved into one of the preeminent technology firms,” the complaint says. “It employed over 110 of the world’s leading scientists, physicists, and engineers, and was at the forefront in designing next-generation science and technology.”

Allen left his full-time role at Microsoft in 1983, well before the company’s move into the Internet. His wide-ranging digital ventures and investments since then have produced decidedly mixed results. Allen remains a shareholder in the Redmond company and remains a friend of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

Microsoft became an even bigger player in the search business just this week -- taking over Yahoo’s underlying search operations to become the No. 2 search provider behind Google in the U.S.

In a statement, Allen spokesman David Postman called Interval Research “an early, ground-breaking contributor to the development of the internet economy.” He added, “Interval has worked hard to bring its technologies to market through spinning off new companies, technology transfer arrangements, and sales of its patented technology.”

Asked why Microsoft or Amazon wasn’t named among the defendants in the suit, Postman declined to comment on litigation strategy. However, he noted that only a handful of Interval’s hundreds of patents are cited in the suit, and said today’s complaint isn’t necessarily the end of the actions that Interval Licensing might take.

"This is the most recent step in a long process," he said in an email, "but it is not necessarily the end of the process."

[Follow-up: A closer look at the patents at issue in the case]