I know… most of you hate about reading some patent lawsuits. Apple, Google,
Samsung, Kodak, Microsoft… they are all involved in some lawsuits with each
other. This time, however, Yahoo is filing a lawsuit against social media leader
Facebook. Yahoo claims rights to technologies, facebook is currently using.

Yaho lists 10 patents 6,907,566, 7,100,111, 7,373,599, 7,668,861, 7,269,590, 7,599,935, 7,454,509, 5,983,227, 7,747,648 and 7,406,501 to be concrete. These describe for example Sending Mail, Notification services and Commenting. If they get the rights for every one of these Patents, then it might become a big avalanche for every system using functions like the mentionned ones. Even WordPress might face these lawsuits as WordPress allows commenting on Posts. With AddOns you may even send Mails and Notifications.

Patent 6,907,566 for example describes a method of displaying graphical elements on a browser independently from the content such as advertisements allowing the user to interact with them.

Patent 7,100,111 is the derivate that describes dynamical loading of elements based on  multiple data sets.

Patent 7,373,599 is the derivate to describe the method of ranking advertisements upon importance.

Patent 7,668,861 describes the method to rate user interactions on a network and evaluate them adding more features

Patent 7,269,590 describes a method of storing and linking/comparing a user’s social profile data against other users’ social profile data. (Annotation: Looking at the scheme, I don’t see any relationship between the patent and the scheme which shows the general interna of a computer system…)

Patent 7,599,935 as derivate from 7,269,590 allows comparison of user’s relationships and enable ranking and rating of their relation degree.

Patent 7,454,509 deals with user’s preference-related information display of related media and entertain services (Annotation: I sense problems for Google/youtube and other services that use such mechanisms)

Patent 5,983,227 deals with user-preferred content display on a page template. While the template is held on the server, it’s contents may be loaded dynamically hereafter. (Annotation: Widgets seem to serve the same function. Is Yahoo also accusing Google, Windows and others for using such techniques?)

Patent 7,747,648 seems to deal with the common function of messaging around the world using data entities applied onto real-world persons or companies. (Annotation: I.e. The basic conect of a social network or communication network?)

Patent 7,406,501 finally deals with the mail function Mail-sending to instant-messenger and vice versa. (Annotation: Umm… let me think… It’s a system that describes exchanging instant messages with e-mail users?! Does Facebook offer such a feature? Never seen so far but interesting theory from Yahoo!)

Fact is that this lawsuit against Facebook is probably an act of envy that facebook is rated higher in value as Yahoo. And now Yahoo as a patent hog is trying to get the dough out of it’s patents.

Another fact: While facebook is currently preparing it’s billion-rated stock market rollout, this kind of lawsuit may lead investors in facebook to thinking if their investment is secure or not. It will have a big impact on facebook anyway!

In my opinion, Yahoo might not get facebook in all points of their patent list. It would mean that they have to face Microsoft, Google, IBM and other big companies for offering sort of similar services in their programs and webservices. Seems to me like a new SCO vs the rest of the world… and we all know how it ended for SCO…