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Permalink Reply by guest_blog on March 14, 2012 at 12:53pm

Yahoo ‘weaponising’ patents to take on Facebook

A former Yahoo employee has attacked the company for using allegedly ambiguous software patents to ‘extort’ money from Facebook.

Facebook is being sued by Yahoo over alleged patent infringement 

By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor

11:52AM GMT 14 Mar 2012

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Andy Baio applied for eight patents while he worked at Yahoo from 2005. Four were subsequently granted, and Baio claims in a piece for Wired.com that he was assured his work would only be used defensively.

On Tuesday, however, Yahoo began suing Facebook for breaching ten of its patents in a move Baio calls “deplorable”.

Baio wrote that action is “nothing less than extortion, expertly timed during the SEC-mandated quiet period before Facebook’s IPO. It’s an attack on invention and the hacker ethic.”

The disputed patents relate to a range of procedures that Techcrunch pointed out are commonplace online, such as instant messaging, spam detection and privacy settings.

Baio’s Upcoming.org calendar site was acquired by Yahoo in 2005, and he says “we were asked to file patents for anything and everything we’d invented. Every Yahoo employee was encouraged to participate in their “Patent Incentive Program,” with sizable bonuses issued to everyone who took the time to apply.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9143068/Yahoo-weaponisin...

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