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The Blame Game: Intellectual Property Analysis of Yahoo! v Facebook v Yahoo! v Facebook

On April 27, 2012, in response to Facebook's counterclaim, Yahoo! asserted two additional advertising patents against Facebook. Yahoo! also asked for invalidation of the asserted Facebook patents, and claimed most of the patents were bought from non-operating entities for the purpose of retaliation. Both parties may be interested in knowing that neither was the first to the online advertising race, as there are thousands of patents, with tens of thousands of similar claims, that overlap Yahoo!’s recent patent assertions.

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Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: Intellectual Property Analysis of Facebook, Inc. v Yahoo!, Inc.

The fight to retain investors is on. In response to Yahoo!’s recent patent infringement suit, Facebook has filed a counterclaim using ten patents of its own. Well, sort of their own. Of the patents asserted, only two were originally assigned to Facebook, which further illustrates our point that Facebook's patent activity is indicative of a company desperate for patent protection. However, Yahoo!’s litigation indicates desperation for revenue, having recently announced plans to layoff 14% of its employees. Could this fight have been avoided, sparing both litigation expenses and JOBS?

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Defriending Facebook: Intellectual Property Analysis of Yahoo! Inc. v Facebook, Inc.

On March 12, 2012, Yahoo! filed a patent infringement suit against Facebook. In the complaint, Yahoo! alleges that “Facebook's entire social networking model … is based on Yahoo!'s patent social networking technology.” A bold statement, since all but one of the asserted patents underwent extensive claim amendments AFTER Facebook was incorporated in 2004. What does this mean? It means the asserted Yahoo! patents have the dual benefit of a pre-2004 application date and a post-2004 visibility into technologies that Facebook had already reduced to practice.

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The Social [Amazon] Network: Intellectual Property Analysis of Amazon.com's social networking patents

Amazon owns a growing set of social networking patents that describe key aspects of Facebook and legally predate Facebook by seven (7) years. Given Facebook’s strategy of back-filling its patent portfolio to retroactively protect itself (i.e. the company filed over 410 US patent applications in the past 18 months vs its 56 granted US patents), what do these Amazon patents mean to Facebook's investors and its forecast $100 billion dollar valuation?

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The Social Network: Intellectual Property Analysis of Facebook, Inc.

Following Facebook’s February 1, 2012 filing for an Initial Public Offering, the market is wondering if Facebook’s quest for public status will paint an even bigger patent litigation target on its back. Is Facebook’s $100 billion valuation protected? Facebook itself certainly doesn’t seem to think so. After all, over 65% of Facebook’s portfolio was originally issued to other entities (e.g., they were NOT the source of innovation).

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Intellectual Property Analysis of Wireless Ink Corporation’s U.S. Patent No. 7,599,983

On March 9, 2011 Wireless Ink Corporation (hereafter referred to as Wireless Ink) won a first round court ruling in a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook, Inc. and Google, Inc. Wireless Ink which owns Winksite, a website and mobile social networking service, has over 75,000 registered users. A mere fraction when compared to the millions of mobile users of Facebook and the traffic generated by Google’s introduction of Buzz.

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Intellectual Property Analysis of Visa, Inc.

This week’s Patently Obvious report focuses on the patent holdings of Visa, Inc. With the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act recently signed into law on July 21, 2010, major credit card companies have found themselves the recipients of new financial regulatory restrictions due to the Durbin amendment.

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