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| Yahoo Sues Patent Case Against Facebook |
The Lawsuit was filed in a California on 12 Mar 2012. Yahoo is one of the famous web company, Yahoo has complaint 10 Patents against Facebook, and break them down into 5 categories and they are 4 Patent of Advertising, 2 Patent of user Privacy, 2 Patent of user customization, 1 Patent of Social Networking and last 1 Patent of Messaging. These patent has charged on Facebook by Yahoo!.In this case patents break down in two categories first is Advertising and second is User Interaction.
Facebook spokesman Jonathan Thaw said Facebook learned of the lawsuit through the media.
"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.
Advertising Patent:
- US Patent No. 6,907,566 - this patent claims priority back to 1999 (granted 2005). The broadest claims cover calculating the performance of clicks on a web page link (e.g., ads) and ranking that performance compared to other available links on the page.
- US Patent No. 7,100,111 - this patent claims priority back to 1999 (granted 2006). Like the '566 patent, this one ranks the link clicks, but also displays the links most likely to get clicks in a "more visually prominent position" on the page.
- Advertising Patent
- US Patent No. 7,373,599 - this patent claims priority back to 1999 (granted 2008). This patent specifically references advertisements — ads are arranged relative to one another on the page in descending order, taking into account the "price per click-through" for the advertisement.
- US Patent No. 7,668,861 - this patent claims priority to 2000 (granted 2008). The '861 patent is focused on categorizing a user based on the user's clicks on particular links (e.g., legitimacy, advertising preferences, etc.).
User Interaction:
- US Patent No. 7,269,590 - this patent claims priority back to 2000 (granted 2007). The broadest claims cover filtering what user profile information is available to others based on the user's profile categories (e.g., memberships, relationships, etc.).
- US Patent No. 7,599,935 - this patent claims priority to 2004 (granted 2009). The claim coverage is all about determining a relationship between a first user and a second user, and using that relationship to define what content from the first user is accessible to the second user.
- US Patent No. 7,454,509 - this patent claims priority to 1999 (granted 2008). This patent covers an online community, where members set preferences for "data stream" content. Access to this content is based on the user's and the community's preferences.
- US Patent No. 5,983,227 - this patent claims priority to 1997 (granted 1999). The broadest claims cover a system for gathering user information, like a postal code, and determining the relative weather and sports teams information (within a predetermined geographical distance) associated with that user.
- US Patent No. 7,747,648 - this patent claims priority to 2005 (granted 2010). These patent claims are a convoluted mess and are seemingly impossible to distill down into words that can be understand by humans. There's a lot of opaque language about world servers, evaluative feedback, entity models, and identifiers. In the end, it may be more important to understand that this is the only patent Yahoo itself identified as covering the specifics of social networking. Regardless, Yahoo isn't likely to win over the hearts and minds of a judge or jury with this one.
- US Patent No. 7,406,501 - this patent claims priority back to 2003 (granted 2008). It covers a method of using pairing tokens to exchange messages between instant messengers and email users. If qualified, an email from one user is delivered as an instant message to another user.
Source: TheVerge ,