How Facebook's Winning The War Against Yahoo, Patent By Patent
Facebook has executed a masterful response to Yahoo’s patent trolling that protects it legally but still makes it look like the victim. Here I examine how for almost every patent Yahoo claims Facebook infringes upon, the social network has countersued with a stronger, more specific patent for content feed sorting, advertising, and privacy.
Facebook will maintain the moral high ground, and likely bypass a costly settlement. But there’s none of Facebook’s blood in the water, nothing for the sharks to circle. It could have gone much worse.
When Yahoo announced its attack, Facebook didn’t surrender and pay up like Google did back in 2004. It chose the smartest of the four defenses outlined by Chris Dixon and others. It refused to settle and pay out valuable stock to close the case before its IPO, which would have shown weakness and encouraged further trolling by Yahoo and others. It didn’t go silently to trial, and risk a massive damages judgement. Nor did it stoop to Yahoo’s level and lash back at full force, suing Yahoo for every Facebook patent it infringed on.
