Facebook Countersues Yahoo Over 10 Patents 80
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the hoist-with-your-own-petard dept.
from the hoist-with-your-own-petard dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As expected, Facebook today filed its own patent infringement lawsuit against Yahoo. The social networking giant is claiming the online giant infringes on 10 of its patents. This is a countersuit and will likely lead to some sort of settlement between the two parties. Facebook says Yahoo is infringing on a wide range of its services, including its homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service, and advertising throughout the service. Two months ago, Yahoo threatened Facebook with patent war. Last month, the online giant sued the social networking giant over 10 patents and the technology industry made sure to criticize Yahoo like never before."
Almost no non-trivial patents (Score:2, Interesting)
Nobody wants to give away their secret sauce recipe by explaining it in a patent that can be understood! That would be commercial suicide. Better to keep the secret and leave others to figure out how you did it.
So they patent mini tangential stuff in the most vague terms possible. I have yet to read a useful patent from the last decade. A 'this is how to make this thing' that somebody can use to make that thing. They're all just a pile of lawyer garbage at this point.
Yet another burden on business, yet another burden that can't be exported either.