Facebook Countersues Yahoo Over 10 Patents

An anonymous reader writes "As expected, Facebook today filed its own patent infringement lawsuit against Yahoo. The social networking giant is claiming the online giant infringes on 10 of its patents. This is a countersuit and will likely lead to some sort of settlement between the two parties. Facebook says Yahoo is infringing on a wide range of its services, including its homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service, and advertising throughout the service. Two months ago, Yahoo threatened Facebook with patent war. Last month, the online giant sued the social networking giant over 10 patents and the technology industry made sure to criticize Yahoo like never before."

Comments

Preaching to the choir

[DigitalSorceress]

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I am so damned sick of world + dog patenting... welll, everything.

It's just ridiculous.

I KNOW there are patents out there for (software) things that are nontrivial .. things that are actually not obvious to any reasonably skilled practitioner of the software arts, but I'm sick to death of these "a method of derpa derp ta derpa derp involving a database to store derpaderp present derp a derp ta derpaderp"

I wish like hell we could just invalidate every software and business method patent and say "you did something special, FINE, copyright your code, but patents are going back to being about physical stuff" /rant

sorry, just annoyed like the rest of you.

Re:Preaching to the choir

[Grayhand]

Darwinism needs to take over. Remove all government funding for law school tutition and the schools themselves except for those that agree to commit 10 or more years to civil service. Change the rules so if a lawsuit is declared frivolous then the party being sued can counter sue for 10X the amount sought. Regulate lawyers as in place a strict limit on the number of lawyers allowed to practice. We have more than the rest of the world put together so there are obviously too many. Limit lawyer fees to time and expenses plus 10%. Limit corporate lawsuits to actual losses plus legal fees. Limit the number of times some one can take the bar. Sorry but some take it for years and even in rare cases decades before they pass. I doubt they hang a sign on their wall that it took five tries to pass the bar. The point is to limit lawsuits and improve the quality of the lawyers that remain. Okay here are scary numbers. There were 1,143,358 lawyers in the US in 2007 but only 751,000 farmers in 2008. There are significantly more lawyers than farmers. Farmers contribute food. Lawyers contribute headaches.

Re:fdfdsa

[Frosty Piss]

frosty piss!!

You called?

look at me lookatmeeeeee

[electron sponge]

I'll be very happy when corporate controlled social networking dies a natural death and there is an open-source, easily manageable solution for attention whores.

"Online giant"?

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

What, who said anything about Google?

Oh, Yahoo!. Yahoo! is hardly an "online giant". More like an online joke. A wanna-be.

And the patents are...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the 10 patents Facebook is suing Yahoo with

U.S. Patent No. 7,827,208 — “Generating a feed of stories personalized for members of a social network” – Filed on August 11, 2006, and granted November 2, 2010.

U.S. Patent No. 7,945,653 — “Tagging digital media” – Filed on October 11, 2006, and granted May 17, 2011.

U.S. Patent No. 6,288,717 — “Headline posting algorithm” – Filed on May 19, 1999, and granted September 11, 2001.

U.S. Patent No. 6,216,133 — “Method for enabling a user to fetch a specific information item from a set of information items, and a system for carrying out such a method” – Filed on May 30, 1996, and granted April 10, 2001.

U.S. Patent No. 6,411,949 — “Customizing database information for presentation with media selections” – Filed on August 12, 1999, and granted June 25, 2002.

U.S. Patent No. 6,236,978 — “ System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications” – Filed on November 14, 1997, and granted May 22, 2001.

U.S. Patent No. 7,603,331 — “ System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications and for validating user rules” – Filed on March 7, 2005, and granted October 13, 2009.

U.S. Patent No. 8,103,611 — “ Architectures, systems, apparatus, methods, and computer-readable medium for providing recommendations to users and applications using multidimensional data” – Filed on September 3, 2009, and granted January 24, 2012.

U.S. Patent No. 8,005,896 — “System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network” – Filed on June 17, 2010, and granted August 23, 2011.

U.S. Patent No. 8,150,913 — “System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network” – Filed on August 22, 2011, and granted April 3, 2012.

It's nice to see Facebook is able to reach back to 1996 for its patent protection, isn't it?

Re:And the patents are...

[Colonel Korn]

Here are the 10 patents Facebook is suing Yahoo with

U.S. Patent No. 7,827,208 — “Generating a feed of stories personalized for members of a social network” – Filed on August 11, 2006, and granted November 2, 2010.

U.S. Patent No. 7,945,653 — “Tagging digital media” – Filed on October 11, 2006, and granted May 17, 2011.

U.S. Patent No. 6,288,717 — “Headline posting algorithm” – Filed on May 19, 1999, and granted September 11, 2001.

U.S. Patent No. 6,216,133 — “Method for enabling a user to fetch a specific information item from a set of information items, and a system for carrying out such a method” – Filed on May 30, 1996, and granted April 10, 2001.

U.S. Patent No. 6,411,949 — “Customizing database information for presentation with media selections” – Filed on August 12, 1999, and granted June 25, 2002.

U.S. Patent No. 6,236,978 — “ System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications” – Filed on November 14, 1997, and granted May 22, 2001.

U.S. Patent No. 7,603,331 — “ System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications and for validating user rules” – Filed on March 7, 2005, and granted October 13, 2009.

U.S. Patent No. 8,103,611 — “ Architectures, systems, apparatus, methods, and computer-readable medium for providing recommendations to users and applications using multidimensional data” – Filed on September 3, 2009, and granted January 24, 2012.

U.S. Patent No. 8,005,896 — “System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network” – Filed on June 17, 2010, and granted August 23, 2011.

U.S. Patent No. 8,150,913 — “System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network” – Filed on August 22, 2011, and granted April 3, 2012.

It's nice to see Facebook is able to reach back to 1996 for its patent protection, isn't it?

According to Ars, several (possibly 8, not confirmed) of the patents were purchased by Facebook since Yahoo sued them.

Re:Almost no non-trivial patents

[viperidaenz]

Yep, if a reasonably skilled person in the specific industry cannot understand the patent and create the described invention then the patent should be invalid.

I hope this is a ugly one.

[Lumpy]

It needs to be very ugly and nasty. It needs to be the catalyst that starts patent reform to eliminate software patents.

It stifles creativity and progress.