Facebook Hits Back Hard On Yahoo Patent Claims, Countersues Over Its Own Patents: Nuclear War Begins

from the what-a-waste dept

It's not surprising, after Yahoo sued Facebook and Facebook stocked up on a bunch more patents, that Facebook would respond with guns blazing at Yahoo for the lawsuit. As we've been arguing for the better part of a decade, in many cases, patents are basically just nuclear stockpiling, where companies get a ton of patents to hopefully ward off strikes from competitors. But every so often, nuclear war breaks out. It seems like that's the case here.

Facebook hasn't just responded to Yahoo's claims by insisting that they're totally and completely bogus, it's also countersuing over a bunch of its own patents. Most of Facebook's response to Yahoo's claims are basically that it "denies the allegations" made by Yahoo. Sometimes, however, it takes some potshots.

Facebook admits that messaging and privacy are offered as options on certain websites. Facebook denies that “[w]ithout Yahoo!’s achievements, websites such as Facebook would not enjoy repeat visitors or substantial advertising revenue.” Facebook further denies that the functions identified in this paragraph of the Complaint involved any innovation by Yahoo!.

For defenses, it basically brings out every possible argument. It says it didn't infringe. It says the patents are invalid. Those are pretty typical. However, Facebook also points out that Yahoo sat on these patents for ages and did nothing with them, so it argues that the doctrine of laches bars the claims (basically saying you can't wait forever before suing) and similarly that any damages would be limited by the amount of time that Yahoo sat on these patents and did nothing. They're also using Section 287 of the patent law to argue that Yahoo's failure to "mark" their inventions as patented severely limits or bars any damages. Basically, every possible defense shows up.

And then come the counterclaims on 10 specific patents, listed here:

• Patent 7,827,208: Generating a feed of stories personalized for members of a social network
• Patent 7,945,653: Tagging digital media
• Patent 6,288,717: Headline posting algorithm
• Patent 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
• Patent 6,411,949: Customizing database information for presentation with media selections
• Patent 6,236,978: System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications
• Patent 7,603,331: System and method for dynamic profiling of users in one-to-one applications and for validating user rules.
• Patent 8,103,611: Architectures, systems, apparatus, methods, and computer-readable medium for providing recommendations to users and applications using multidimensional data
• Patent 8,005,896: System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network
• Patent 8,150,913: System for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network

It's worth noting that only the first two of those patents initially started life with Facebook. The others it picked up along the way. Though, it does appear as though that last patent was issued... today. Overall, these patents look just about as silly as most of the ones that Yahoo used to sue in the first place, but that's the nature of patents these days (especially software patents). Facebook is using what it has to fight back against Yahoo, but the whole thing seems like an incredibly silly waste of time, money and resources for both companies.

Filed Under: counterclaim, patent war, stockpiling
Companies: facebook, yahoo