Yahoo Escalates Patent War With Facebook

Yahoo just took its war of lawsuits with Facebook to the next level, adding two more patent-infringement claims to the 10 it filed for back in March.
The company also accused Facebook of not having a good-faith belief in the counterclaim it filed almost a month ago.
“Today Yahoo! filed additional claims against Facebook in U.S. District Court related to two additional patents on which Facebook infringes,” Yahoo said in an emailed statement.
“As we have stated previously, Yahoo!’s technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. We intend to vigorously protect these technologies for our customers and shareholders.”
In the face of the new claims, Facebook was more succinct: “We remain perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions,” a Facebook spokesperson said, also in an emailed statement. “We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”
With the “erratic” dig, Facebook seems to be depicting Yahoo as the tech-company equivalent of a crotchety old man. Considering Yahoo specifically calls out Facebook for using recently acquired patents as the basis of its lawsuit — even though some of the patents in Yahoo’s claim were acquired as well — the image may well stick.

A quick recap: Shortly after appointing former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as CEO, Yahoo warned Facebook that the social network was infringing on its intellectual property — specifically, 10 patents that relate to Internet technologies.
It then went ahead and sued Facebook a few weeks later, becoming something of a tech-industry pariah in the process.
Facebook, rather than try to end the suit with a quick settlement, set out to arm itself for a retaliatory strike. The social network quickly acquired many patents from both IBM and Microsoft. Facebook also countersued Yahoo — saying that it, too, was guilty of patent infringement.
The whole affair would be funny if it wasn’t a symptom of a wider, all-out patent war. In the last year we’ve seen Apple, Google, Microsoft and a host of others sue the pants of each other, and a company that barely does anything can claim to hold a patent on the web itself.
So this latest salvo in the Facebook-Yahoo patent war likely won’t be the last. What’s your take on the ongoing dispute? Sound off in the comments.

10:32 by Robert dawne · 2

Google Wants a 2.25% Cut of Every iPhone Sale

Looking to earn back some of the $12.5 billion it’s spending to buy Motorola Mobility, Google sent a letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers looking for a maximum 2.25% cut of sales for phones that use Motorola’s technology, including Apple‘s iPhone.
The letter, which went out to the IEEE on Wednesday, outlines Google’s position on Motorola patents if and when the proposed takeover is executed. (Reports say it could happen next week.) Most striking was Google’s insistence on continuing to enforce a 2.25% fee on iPhones based on the model’s use of Motorola patents.
Google’s stance comes about two weeks after Motorola Mobility filed a lawsuit against Apple accusing the company of infringing on its technology patents. Motorola’s complaint, filed in a Florida federal court, concerns patents for the iPhone 4S and Apple’s iCloud service.
Patents has proved to be a key issue for Google and likely a primary impetus for the Motorola Mobility acquisition. That bid came after a very public spat this summer between Google, Apple and Microsoft over patents.
Google fired the first salvo in early August by using its Official Blog to kvetch about an “organized campaign by Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.” The post, by David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, went on to accuse Apple and Microsoft for being “in bed together” in an attempt to hurt Google’s business via patent claims.
Though Apple stayed above the fray, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith took to Twitter to point out that Microsoft had invited Google to jointly bid on patents from Novell. Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s lead of corporate communications, also posted a letter from Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, refusing Microsoft’s invitation regarding the Novell patents.

The iPhone 4S looks and feels exactly like the iPhone 4.

The most important new feature of the iPhone 4S is Siri, a voice-controlled "Intelligent Assistant" that can complete tasks based on natural language. Ask it what the weather is like today and it will respond with details.

08:42 by iliot Atlas · 0