Yahoo Carried Through on its Promise to Litigate Facebook
Yahoo carried through on its promise to litigate Facebook by filing a complaint in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. The famous web portal, Yahoo, charged Facebook for violating its 10 patents. These patents cover many features and technologies currently being used by the world’s largest online social network Facebook. These features include messaging, news feed generation, social commenting advertising display, preventing click fraud and privacy controls.
The complaint states, “Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, person and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology.” To support its allegations, Yahoo even tried to present itself as a hero of Facebook’s rapid economic growth story.
Back in February, as mentioned in a report published in The New York Times, both the sides were in talks to resolve the conflict, but failed to work out an agreement over the patent issue. Yahoo demanded to be paid all the licensing fees and threatened to take legal action in case Facebook wouldn’t pay licensing fees.
In a statement published in Reuters, the Facebook spokesman Jonathan Thaw said, “We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation,” He said that Facebook came to know about the lawsuit through the media.
On the other hand, in an emailed statement to news agencies Yahoo Inc. claimed, “Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court.”
As Yahoo filed the lawsuit just before Facebook’s launch of the IPO, social media community taking it as a strategic move. Facebook might be more willing to settle the conflict on yahoo’s terms because it’s in the IPO process. Yahoo is not doing it the first time. The similar has happened in the case of Google, the largest Internet company. Google settled by issuing shares as a licensing fee to Yahoo nine days before Google went public in 2004. In 2012 the law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, is the same and the timing is perfect. What has changed is the other side.
You can get the copy of Complaint for Patent Infringement at Scribd
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