Facebook Locks Down Social Gift Giving Patent

bizwriter writes "Facebook has been on a roll of late, nailing a number of patent grants that will help it retain dominance in social networking by creating barriers for competitors. Yesterday came patent number 7,970,657, 'Giving gifts and displaying assets in a social network environment'. Although it doesn't directly prevent other social networks from enabling gift giving among users, a clever legal and technical maneuver makes it far more difficult."

Comments

europe

[chris.alex.thomas]

In europe I doubt many people will care much, I'll write my software without fear of software patents and just scrub off the USA from my list of places to visit, then when the legal letter arrives with "you must stop using our " I'll throw it in the bin and carry on with my life. If you live in a truely free country, you don't tend to care what other legal systems say, what matters, is what your country says... I love europe sometimes, although I hope that they don't change the whole "patents are not valid in europe" thingy.....and lets hope I don't bump into any "rendition crews" :)

Re:Facebook is a fad

[vlm]

Or... They will get bought out by a patent troll.

Or their new competitor, whatever it will be, will have to buy them out or else get patent trolled.

That is the gameplan. Can't sell out once everyone leaves, but even if there are no subscribers, you still get to keep the "valuable" patents.

Its a sign that FB internally realizes they have peaked and are on the decline.