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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.'"
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.
and im sorry but im guessing someone had a patent on 'selection of high quality linkage indicators in a computer network' if they looked hard enough.
if yahoo has anything, it is a right to join the corrupt backstabbing club of big tech giants who are all shaking each other down with lawyers playing the role of 'knee-cap breaker'. its very similar to how the mafia controls a neighborhood. each 'family' has 'turf' and 'agreements' to get cuts of various businesses. and they are always fighting amongst each other and threatening to wipe each other out.
meanwhile, ordinary people are just trying to build stuff, make a small profit, and live a normal life. not die with a mountain of cocaine piled on top of our desk.
Then why not sue years ago when they had more money? Yahoo! is circling the bowl. We all know it....
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.
Yahoo was never a search engine. The were one of the "hand made index" school. When that idea proved unworkable, they started adding other's real search engine results to their indexed entries.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
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.
Technically, from 2004 to 2009, Yahoo had its own results, which were actually pulled by a real crawler. Said crawler was originally a company they contracted from, Inktomi, but later bought. I remember this era brightly, because the results were so bad.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
The article has a link to the suit - the patents all sound fairly generic:
- Method and System for Optimal Placement of Advertisements on a Webpage [3 patents]
- System and Method to Determine the Validity of an Interaction on a Network
- Method and System for Customizing Views of Information Associated with a Social Network User
- Control for Enabling a User to Preview Display of Selected Content Based on Another User's Authorization Level
- Online Playback System with Community Bias
- Dynamic Page Generator
- World Modeling Using a Relationship Network with Communication Channels to Entities
- System and Method for Instant Messaging Using an E-mail Protocol
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.
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.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Here are links to the 10 patents discussed in the case. I made it partway through one of them before I decided to go have a beer instead. Maybe someone else has more patience.
6,907,566 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage
7,100,111 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage
7,373,599 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage
7,668,861 System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network
7,269,590 Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user
7,599,935 Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user's authorization level
7,454,509 Online playback system with community bias
5,983,227 Dynamic page generator
7,747,648 World modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities
7,406,501 System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail protocol