Yahoo Files Patent Infringement Suit Against Facebook

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article over at ZD Net: "As expected, Yahoo today filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook. The online giant is claiming the social networking giant infringes on 10 of its patents. Yahoo is hoping to secure some portion of Facebook's revenues moving forward. 'Yahoo! has invested substantial resources in research and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies have licensed,' a Yahoo spokesperson told AllThingsD. 'These technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail.'"

Comments

I don't know whether to laugh or cry

[multiben]

The quantity of time and energy these guys spend suing each other is staggering. It is sad to see other parts of the world (Australia) following the US example in this field rather than learning from it.

Re:I don't know whether to laugh or cry

[olsmeister]

And during the golden age of technology, when computers ran faster than ever before and all the far flung corners of the world were connected and able to communicate instantaneously, the most lucrative profession a young geek could aspire to was ... lawyer.

The Difference is...

[way2trivial]

Yahoo actually may have the basis for a legitimate lawsuit...

Re:The Difference is...

[Xtifr]

Post Bilski, that seems pretty improbable. Much as I may despise Facebook and don't care one way or the other about Yahoo, I'm not going to concede that anything involving pure software can ever qualify as the basis for a legitimate patent suit.

More obvious, trivial junk patents

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just more obvious trivial junk that should never have been given a patent in the first place.

Re:More obvious, trivial junk patents

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's why you made your own search engine prior to Yahoo implementing these technologies? Oh right, just another freetard bleating about how these patents were "obvious" after-the-fact.

Re:More obvious, trivial junk patents

[Man On Pink Corner]

Funny how 99.99% of all of the software and hardware you use every day was ineligible for patent protection or otherwise created without bothering with it. It's almost as if patents are just another economic racket associated with living in a lawyer-ridden society, or something.

Re:More obvious, trivial junk patents

[LizardKing]

So that's why you made your own search engine prior to Yahoo implementing these technologies?

Yahoo! isn't a search engine. It was originally a hand edited directory of websites, and the true search engine was licensed (from AltaVista and Google amongst others). Their code was a horrendous mess of C modules running on many different hacked up versions of Apache and it crashed with shocking frequency. The only reason the site stayed up was because each Apache instance was largely autonomous and individual machines could be rebooted as necessary. The backend was no more stable, often running with the data in shared memory on FreeBSD machines that would also require regular rebooting since they were using crazy kernel configurations.

Amusingly, given their lack of project management processes, a few years ago they switched to PHP as their preferred development platform. I'm sure this has resulted in another clusterfuck.

Re:Troll-dam dam da

[ae1294]

Then why not sue years ago when they had more money? Yahoo! is circling the bowl. We all know it....

The most popular degree is law

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have 1 in 3 students in the USA taking a major in law what did you think would happen ?

"Among those seeking a doctorate or professional degree, law was the No. 1 choice among men and women. There were nearly three times as many men and women becoming attorneys as there were earning a medical degree"
source

with all those lawyers itching to use their new found knowledge who are also in 6 digit debt to get their degree, and desperate does what desperate can, nothing clarifies the mind quite like a debt collector banging your door at 5am

well you end up with a society just like the one we see emerging, sue everybody for anything because you need to put food on your table AND pay the piper at the end of the month or he will take all you have.

so this Yahoo trial is just the tip of the iceberg, the best conclusion for any business is if you want to innovate, do it outside USA, do not sell/visit/talk to them, its safer that way.

Innovation, really?

[OMG]

I have taken the time to read through some of their earlier patents cited in the law suit. "Intelligent placement of adds", likelihood of clicks etc. This is so ... innovatiive?
Any of those guys and patent lawyers ever worked in the "real world"? Just because you do something that has been done all the time on the web it's not automatically an innovation.

Re:Plan for eliminating software patents

[Baloroth]

First, I'm not 100% certain such a co-op would be legal in all cases, but aside from that it wouldn't matter in all the most important cases. See, the real patent trolls are those who don't even have a product, only a patent: the co-op is powerless against them, since they have no leverage (remember, the troll isn't using any patent or possible patent, he only "owns" them), while the troll can patent nearly anything, which means there will always be something the co-op members could get sued for (it just isn't possible for them to cover everything themselves).

So while a decent idea, in theory, I doubt very much it would actually work. It might prevent this suit, but really this suit isn't one of the really egregious cases anyways (except insofar as software patents are bullshit).

Plus, in the extreme opposite direction, Apple has far too much clout to be bowed by such a co-op, and I suspect there would be others who are too powerful as well (Microsoft, perhaps) and without the ability to force everyone to join, it won't ultimately be effective.