Yahoo Sues Facebook For Patent Infringement

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc sued Facebook Inc on Monday over 10 patents that include methods and systems for advertising on the Web, according to a copy of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed in a San Jose, California federal court, marks the first major legal battle among technology giants in social media and a major escalation of patent litigation that has already swept up the smartphone and tablet sectors and high-tech stalwarts such as Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.

Yahoo's patent lawsuit follows Facebook's announcement of plans for an initial public offering that could value the company at about $100 billion. A Facebook spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

In an emailed statement, Yahoo said it is confident it will prevail.

"Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court," the company said in a statement.

Several social networking companies, including Facebook, have seen an uptick in patent claims asserted against them as they move through the IPO process.

However, most of those lawsuits have been filed by patent aggregators that buy up intellectual property to squeeze value from it via licensing deals and none by a large tech company such as Yahoo.

(Reporting By Dan Levine; editing by Andre Grenon)

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

Check out reactions from Tweeters.

Comments

[Harry C]

08:27 PM on 03/20/2012

How blind is Dan Levine? Huffington Post? Or 99.99% of the press? Especially when this is all PUBLIC information!! Facebook was found guilty of “literal infringement” of 11 of 11 Leader patent claims in federal court, which essentially means that the engine running Facebook is Leader’s invention?
Facebook did not bother to disclose this in the S-1, as required: “Filers must disclose legal proceedings that: 1. Are other than ordinary routine litigation 2. claims [sic] that exceed 10% of the current assets of the issuer.” Apparently Facebook believes that their first-ever hearing at the second highest court in the United States (Mar 5, 2012 at the Federal Circuit) was “routine.” Facebook is required by law to disclose in an S-1 any liability amounting to more than 10% of their assets. If Facebook loses Leader v. Facebook, they might have to pay damages ranging from 5-25% of their gross revenue from 2006 to 2021. 5-25% of Facebook’s gross revenue will likely be more.

[nicole nicky]

04:57 PM on 03/19/2012

what happened

[genamason]

01:54 AM on 03/19/2012

Indeed, the area of software patents looks to be the next frontier of extensive intellectual property legal battles. While I'm not against the idea of patenting software, I wouldn't be surprised if these coming fights eventually led either to new limitations on software patents, or even to their elimination altogether.
http://www.aminn.org/patent-legislation

[Vaxo Vaxacho]

03:22 PM on 03/16/2012

I don't understand what game they play. And there are so many changes in Facebook lately. People can hardly adopt to one thing and they change it. How many times they can change the look of Facebook http://blxur.com/revolution-in-facebook-marketing-timeline-for-pages-has-arrived/

[Ayesha Khan]

03:32 PM on 03/13/2012

Now how can be methods and strategies be a patent ? Can Yahoo be more precise cause in the world of advertising some set methods can be followed, by others as they are no body's heritage, yes its the product that makes a difference. If a company that manufactures tooth paste comes with an add that shows lovely white teeth, and a stunning smile does that means the other tooth paste manufacturers cannot use the same idea for promoting their product. The infringement can only take place if you are using the brand name, or when a company before releasing the add claims the copy rights and restricts others to follow the same method------

[Hansen IP Law]

06:51 PM on 03/15/2012

If you are interested in how this case may play out, today we posted a blog at hanseniplaw.com/blog which discusses a key issue that may arise in the case: whether the patents cover “statutory subject matter.” This concerns whether the patents cover the type of thing that can be patented, regardless of how new it is. The law is very muddy in this area, but it may provide fertile ground for Facebook to attack. It may also present an opportunity for the courts to do a better job of clarifying what can and cannot be patented.

[Max Shaw]

01:51 PM on 03/13/2012

Yahoo is trying to stall for time...

[Mouse223]

12:08 PM on 03/13/2012

Uh oh.....the nerds are about to get into a fight.....XD

[rhuntsbe]

12:02 PM on 03/13/2012

Facebook are pirates. Yahoo patented it's technology in the ‘early years’ of web sites. Facebook pirates the patented technology, and then posts it in the public domain as ‘open source’. Then Facebook says, ‘who me’?

[Jay from Ottawa]

10:55 AM on 03/13/2012

Maybe Yahoo can use the extra money to stop hosting milliosn of scam and phishing website.

It usually takes me less than 3 minutes to track a fraudulent website back to yahoo hosting. The first time, it took me, no joke, 3 hours to report it to Yahoo (they made it very VERY difficult) and it took them, two weeks+ to send me a reply and take it down.

[Jared Allaway]

04:05 AM on 03/14/2012

Thank you for helping to get rid of fraudulent stuff! :)

[Jay from Ottawa]

10:22 AM on 03/14/2012

My pleasure ! I'm always willing to go to great lenghts to mess with those who prey on others.

[mcakins32]

09:43 AM on 03/13/2012

and google all you are doin know is sitting in your big office watching what every one else is doin that means you have nothin else to do you ever thought bout working for wal mart they pay 8 dollars a hour to and your on your feet and they have coke machines to buy from people is that all we think about is sueing other people your parents would and my parent would kick my a,, if they knew what the USA has d
become come on people give it a break

[Mouse223]

12:05 PM on 03/13/2012

Do you know what a period (.) is? Try using one. You won't seem like you're ranting and rambling.

[Querent]

12:20 PM on 03/13/2012

Yes he will.

[jsarets]

09:38 AM on 03/13/2012

At the first job I had which involved any web development, the application used a Javascript framework called YUI (Yahoo UI), which was obviously written by Yahoo. It was the one of the worst libraries I've ever encountered. The team lead was having us gradually rewrite everything using jQuery libraries, which are considerably better in just about every way.

The thing is, I'd be shocked if Yahoo doesn't own any patents related to YUI that are being infringed by jQuery and many other web development tools. This is a big problem with software patents. The companies which patent the "ideas" often produce rather poor implementations of those ideas, and then they pounce on others who develop better products.

The community of open-source developers working on jQuery has recently formed an official legal entity known as the jQuery Foundation, and one the main objectives of this organization is to consolidate defenses against the possibility of their users being sued for patent infringement.

This is madness. We should absolutely protect software implementations with copyright, but it is absurd to patent ideas in an industry based on network effects, where agreeing to share ideas is the only way to have vigorous competition among implementations.

[Christian Howell]

10:42 PM on 03/13/2012

I agree. The worse one was the company that sued MS for XML. XML.
XML was designed to describe things and EVERY document has a paragraph, sentence, word, punctuation. MS isn't my favorite company but that is RIDICULOUS.

[Bobby5000]

09:38 AM on 03/13/2012

Translation, Please buy me.

[rhuntsbe]

11:57 AM on 03/13/2012

Smile.

[Mouse223]

12:06 PM on 03/13/2012

=D

[mcakins32]

09:37 AM on 03/13/2012

gooogle get a dam life

[Joe Mando]

09:35 AM on 03/13/2012

FB is not your friend. Time to WTF up.

[HarleyOpenRoad]

09:23 AM on 03/13/2012

FarceBook.

[wisdom4you]

02:18 PM on 03/13/2012

harley ??? on the vodka so early ??? you spelt facebook wrong.