Facebook Buys 750 IBM Patents 46
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by
Soulskill
from the business-imitates-black-market-weapon-deals dept.
from the business-imitates-black-market-weapon-deals dept.
eldavojohn writes "Considering IBM's portfolio gained 6,180 last year alone, it's not a huge number. But after a dispute with Yahoo a couple weeks ago, Facebook has purchased 750 patents from IBM. That's over thirteen times the 56 they were reportedly holding. The humorous rumor is that Yahoo might have been licensing these patents from IBM. If you can't beat 'em, buy the patents they're licensing from another company. Another rumor is that Facebook might be just getting started in their bid to expand their patent portfolio (video). No word yet whether the purchased patents directly pertain to Yahoo's infringement claims on messaging, privacy controls, advertising, customization and social networking."
Re:Software patents are bad (Score:4, Informative)
IBM doesn't get all that many software patents. Theirs are mostly hardware innovations.
Re:Software patents are bad (Score:4, Informative)
You will notice that nowhere in that article does it actually say that IBM did sue, threaten to sue, or even send a cease and desist letter to anyone. In fact, all IBM said was that they would not license their software to run on TurboHercules. That some paranoid guy interpreted that as IBM 'threatening' him, well, that is really not IBM's problem.
As for the rest of your little rant: so what? If you need full performance of the machine, you pay for it. If you don't, you don't. Where, exactly, is the 'scam'? And if you think a mainframe provides the same value as off-the-shelf PC hardware, well, then there is really no point in trying to have an intelligent discussion with you. And BTW, the processors run at >5GHz.