Facebook Files First Patent Lawsuit; Countersuing Alt Weekly Newspaper Company Who Sued First

from the watch-who-you-sue dept

Facebook, like many growing Silicon Valley companies, has not been known to use patents for offensive purposes, but the company has now filed its first patent infringement lawsuit. However, this is really a defensive strike, as it's a countersuit against Phoenix Media, publisher of the Boston Phoenix, an alt-weekly publication. Apparently Phoenix sued Facebook last year over a patent (6,253,216) on "providing a personal profile page" (stop laughing -- it's really been patented).

As the article notes, Facebook has been sued about 15 times for patent infringement, and has (so far) refused to settle any cases. In most cases, the lawsuits are by patent holding companies, so there's nothing to sue them back over. However, since this is an actual operating company, Facebook has launched its countersuit, suing for patent infringement over two patents that it acquired from other companies recently. It's nice to see Facebook pushing back against those who sue it over silly patents. It will be worth watching to see if it continues to be aggressive against such bogus threats.

Filed Under: patents, profiles
Companies: boston phoenix, facebook, phoenix media