As we predicted last month, Yahoo has decided to move forward and sue Facebook over claims that Facebook is infringing on a wide range of things from a news feed, messaging, social network, privacy technology and pretty much everything else.
This absolutely massive complaint basically claims “Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profile for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology.” Basically, Yahoo basically owns the entire Facebook site technology, and Facebook needs to pay up immediately.
This comes at a horrible time for Facebook as they attempt to grow their advertising base as they plan going public. With this possible lawsuit, that says nothing short that Facebook’s entire business plan and technology is based on Yahoo patents, it means that Facebook would face a hard time going public or continuing to operate as long as they were facing this shadow. In fact in the lawsuit, they are asking for triple damages, which would mean tens of billions of dollars, or require Facebook to stop using their patents, effectively shutting the site down.
Yahoo sued Google similarly, before they went public, claiming Google was infringing on their patents. That results in Yahoo receiving almost $1.5B in stock from Google. The reason they are filing a lawsuit now, is pretty much hoping to have the same scenario applied to them, but probably 10 times more money.
The Full Complaint is Below
