Facebook To Yahoo: Claims Yahoo Infringing Ten Of Its Patents

Posted on Apr 4 2012 - 5:35am by Editorial Staff

As we reported earlier that Yahoo sued Facebook over the technology patent issue, the patents are related to advertising, personalized web pages, social networking and messaging to Yahoo. The social giant today just returned fire on Yahoo by filing its own patent infringement assertions, claiming that Yahoo is infringing their ten patents. Let’s take a look at what Facebook actually is using to target Yahoo.

US Patent No. 7,827,208 – This patent claims priority back to 2008 (granted 2010) and covers a method of generating a personalized story on a social network based on the user’s actions and the common actions of other users. Facebook claims that Photostream, Recent Activity and Groups Activity features on Flickr infringe the patent.

US Patent No. 7,945,653 – This patent, identifying Mark Zuckerberg as the first listed inventor, claims priority back to 2008 (granted 2011) and covers a method of allowing a user to reject his or her identification in digital media posted by another user. Facebook claims that the People in Photos feature of Flickr infringe the patent.

US Patent No. 6,216,133 – This patent claims priority back to 1995 (granted 2001) and was originally filed by Philips Corp. The patent was assigned to Facebook in December 2011. The broadest claims cover a method of fetching information based on a user’s past interaction patterns. Facebook alleges that My Yahoo, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Travel, Flickr, and various other Yahoo services infringe the patent.

US Patent No. 6,288,717 – This patent claims priority back to 1999 (granted 2001) and was just assigned over to Facebook three days ago. It covers a method of providing a user with selected, ranked and posted topics of interest on their page based on that user’s identified interests. Facebook claims that Yahoo’s home page infringes the patent.

US Patent No. 6,411,949 – This patent claims priority back to 1999 (granted 2002) and was also originally filed by Philips and assigned to Facebook last December. The patent covers a system for “enhancing content” by selecting and supplying media to a user based on the user’s profile or preferences.

US Patent No. 7,603,331 – This patent claims priority back to 1997 (granted 2009) and covers a method of providing a user with dynamic recommendations based on historical data for the user. Flickr and the litany of other Yahoo services are listed again as infringing.

US Patent No. 6,236,978 – This patent claims priority back to 1997 (granted 2001). The patent covers the creation of a user profile based on static factual information (e.g., sex, age, location, etc.) for the user and dynamic information based on transactions by the user (e.g., purchase preferences). Again, Facebook claims Flickr, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and other services infringe.

US Patent No. 8,005,896 – This patent claims priority back to 1998 (granted 2011) and was assigned over to Facebook in February. The patent covers the specific network procedures for allowing users to request and exchange content. Facebook alleges that Flickr infringes this patent.

US Patent No. 8,150,913 – This patent claims priority back to 1998 (granted 2012) and was also just assigned over to Facebook in February. The patent covers controlling access to user profile information on a network, and allowing users to individually grant other users access to interact with videos and photos.

US Patent No. 8,103,611 – This patent claims priority back to 1995 (granted 2012) and covers providing a user with a recommendation based on “multidimensional data,” using the Cartesian product of the dimensions. This is a nerdy one, and continues the trend of alleging that nearly all of Yahoo’s services infringe.

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