Software patents not all bad

So Paul Allen sues over patents and I'm sure he'll attract a lot of flak for that. But a side issue interests me particularly: The patents were originally awarded to Interval Research, a tech R&D firm founded by Allen and former Xerox executive David Liddle in 1992. The firm was folded in 2000, and the patents were later transferred to Interval Licensing.

This interests me because I have some unreleased code with very innovative features lying around. Hm, hm, hm.

Software patents are terrible, in so many ways. But maybe Interval's investors will get their money back now.

As an aside, I seem to have a problem with one of the involved patents. I wrote an attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device for Qt 10-15 years ago. I filched the idea from someone else's UI, though, so there may be an older patent, prior art, or both.