Interval Research Corporation
 | |
| Research think tank | |
| Industry | Research and Development |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Founded | 1992 |
| Defunct | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, U.S. |
Key people |
Paul Allen (Chairman) David Liddle (CEO, President) |
Number of employees | More than 110[1] |
Interval Research Corporation was founded in 1992 by Paul Allen and David Liddle. It was a Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator focusing on consumer product applications and services with a focus on the Internet.[2]
A 1997 version of the company's web page described itself as "a research setting seeking to define the issues, map out the concepts and create the technology that will be important in the future.... [pursuing] basic innovations in a number of early-stage technologies and [seeking] to foster industries around them -- sparking opportunity for entrepreneurs and highlighting a new approach to research.".[3]
A 1999 Wired magazine article based on a memo from Paul Allen described the company as under fire from Allen to produce "less R and more D."[4] Interval Research Corporation officially closed its doors in April 2000, while a small group of former employees were kept on to form Interval Media to continue a few specific projects. Interval Media was closed in June, 2006. As of June 2008, the interval.com domain registration was maintained by Digeo, another Paul Allen company.
Former employees
During its brief existence, Interval employed many well-known computer technology pioneers and experts, including:
- Denise Caruso, technology journalist
- Franklin C. Crow, inventor of important anti-aliasing techniques
- Sally Cruikshank, filmmaker and animator
- Marc Davis, founder of Yahoo! Research Berkeley
- Paul Debevec, computer graphics researcher
- Glenn Edens, founder of Grid Systems Corporation, which made the first laptop computer
- Rolf Faste, Stanford design professor, who led the team that named the corporation "Interval Research"
- Lee Felsenstein, designer of the first mass-produced portable computer
- Paul Freiberger, Silicon Valley journalist
- Don Hopkins, new-media artist, The Sims developer and pie menu interface designer
- Brenda Laurel, author, entrepreneur, virtual-reality artist
- Golan Levin, new-media artist
- Daniel Levitin, cognitive neuroscientist, best-selling author
- David Levitt, virtual reality pioneer, creator of Pantomime VR platform
- David Liddle, venture capitalist
- Michael Naimark, new-media artist
- John R. Pierce, electrical engineer, inventor of satellite telecommunication and the travelling wave tube
- Dean Radin, parapsychologist
- David P. Reed, inventor of TCP/IP
- Robert Shaw, physicist and chaos theory pioneer
- Richard Shoup, creator of SuperPaint
- Scott Snibbe, new-media artist
- Bill Verplank, interface designer of the Xerox Star, the first WIMP (computing) GUI
- Leo Villareal, installation artist and Burning Man board member[5]
Patents
Interval Research was issued approximately 130 US patents.[6] Four of its patents, now owned by Allen's Interval Licensing LLC, are the subject of a patent infringement lawsuit Interval Licensing filed in August 2010 against AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo!, and YouTube (but not Microsoft):[1][7]
- US 6034652: "Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device". View Patent Landscape Map.
- US 6788314: "Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device (continuation)". View Patent Landscape Map.
- US 6263507: "Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data". View Patent Landscape Map.
- US 6757682: "Alerting users to items of current interest". View Patent Landscape Map.
The lawsuit also points out that Interval Research was credited by Google in 1998 as an "outside collaborator" and one of the companies that funded research by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page that resulted in Google.[1] On Mar. 3, 2011, Article One Partners announced that one of the patents held by Interval Licensing would be posted to their online community to utilize Public participation in patent examination. The patent in question was U.S. Patent No. 6,263,507, defined as "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data."[8]
References
- 1 2 3 Searcey, Dionne (August 28, 2010). "Microsoft Co-Founder Launches Patent War". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
- ↑ "WTO Board Bio: David Liddle". Archived from the original on 2007-03-11.
- ↑ Interval Research Corporation - About - Page (From:13-November-1996)
- ↑ Bass, Thomas A. (Dec 1999). "Think Tanked". Wired Magazine. Retrieved 20 April 2010.
- ↑ http://burningman.org/network/about-us/people/board-of-directors/#LeoVillareal
- ↑ Interval Research's List of US Patents
- ↑ "Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL Inc. et al." (PDF). Complaint for Patent Infringement. The Wall Street Journal. August 27, 2010. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
- ↑ "Article One Partners Launches Public Review of Interval Licensing LLC Patent Asserted Against Technology Industry Leaders"
External links
- Think Tanked Wired magazine, December 1999