Facebook aspects patent attack from Yahoo!

Feb 29, 2012, by admin

The firm, which was one of thesuperstars of the dotcom era but has resisted to keep up since the appearance of Google, asserts the world’s largest social network is infringing its patents on advertising, privacy controls, news feeds and messaging services.

According to The New York Times, Facebook and Yahoo held talks on the issue yesterday.“Yahoo has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to defend its rational possessions,” a Yahoo! spokesman said.“We must persist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be obliged to move forward unilaterally to defend our rights.”

Details of Yahoo!’s financial demands were not available.

Yahoo! said other companies have already licensed some of the technologies at issue. Its patent asserts follow Facebook’s statement of plans for an initial public suggesting that could value the company at about $100bn.A Facebook spokesman said: “Yahoo contacted us at the same time they called the New York Times and so we haven’t had the chance to fully assess their claims.”

Several social networking companies, including Facebook, have seen an amplify in patent asserts declared against them as they move during the IPO process.However, most of those lawsuits have been cased by patent aggregators that buy up rational possessions to press value from it through licensing contracts, and none by a large tech company such as Yahoo.