Facebook Works On Yahoo! Patents; Files Legal Suit

On 28 February, Yahoo! had approached the social networking giant, Facebook to discuss about their impending licence fees on 10-20 patents owned by Yahoo! that are being used by them. The company had even indicated that a law suit will be filed if Facebook fails to comply with the terms. Yesterday, the company finally went ahead and filed a legal suit that includes ten different Yahoo patents in San Jose court against Facebook. The law suit openly claims that “without Yahoo’s achievements, websites such as Facebook would not enjoy repeat visitors or substantial advertising revenue.” However, the social networking giant is not taking it easy. A Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat that, “We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation.” He also added that they got to know about the legal suit along with the media and will take every possible step to defend themselves against such allegations.  The suit also mentions: For much of the technology upon which Facebook is based, Yahoo! got there first and was therefore granted patents by the United States Patent Office to protect those innovations. Prior to adopting Yahoo’s patented social networking technology in 2008, Facebook was considered one of the worst performing Internet sites for advertising.