Yahoo Inc sued Facebook Inc over 10 patents that include methods and systems for advertising on the Web, opening the first major legal battle among big technology companies in social media.
The lawsuit, filed in a San Jose, California, US federal court on Monday, marks a major escalation of patent litigation that has already swept up the smartphone and tablet sectors and high-tech stalwarts such as Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.
Yahoo’s patent lawsuit follows Facebook’s announcement of plans for an initial public offering that could value the company at about US$100 billion.
Photo: Reuters
Facebook spokesperson Jonathan Thaw said Facebook learned of the lawsuit through the media.
“We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation,” he said.
In an e-mailed statement, Yahoo said it was confident it would prevail.
“Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court,” the company said in a statement.
Only two of the 10 patents at issue are directly related to social networking technology. Most focus on online advertising, including methods for preventing “click fraud,” as well as privacy and technology for customizing the information users see on a Web page.
Yahoo, one of the Web’s pioneering companies, has seen its revenues decline in recent years at a time when rivals, such as Facebook and Google, have thrived. In January, Yahoo appointed former PayPal president Scott Thompson as its new chief executive, replacing Carol Bartz, who was fired in September last year.
Yahoo said late last month it was seeking licensing fees from Facebook over its patents and that other companies have already agreed to such licensing deals.
Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara Law in Silicon Valley, said companies are usually more vulnerable to patent suits when they are in the IPO process.
“As a general proposition, when a company is about to go public, the last thing it needs is to get involved in a knock-down, drag-out litigation fight,” Chien said. “So that might make Facebook more willing to resolve its differences with Yahoo.”
Yahoo has used similar timing to its advantage in the past. Google agreed to issue shares to Yahoo nine days before Google went public in 2004 in exchange for a license to Yahoo’s patents. Google later took a US$201 million non-cash charge related to the transaction.
Yahoo has not said whether it would bring patent claims against other social networking companies and a Google spokesperson declined to comment on the Quinn Emanuel litigation firm’s involvement. Zynga also declined to comment.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to