Yahoo! finds strength in patents

Looks like the patent war might be spilling over from phone and tablet makers to social networks. Yahoo! threatened Facebook with a lawsuit yesterday, saying that the social networking site owes the company with the superfluous exclamation point some licensing fees. According to an unnamed source from the New York Times, “Yahoo is seeking to force Facebook into licensing 10 to 20 patents over technologies that include advertising, the personalization of Web sites, social networking and messaging.”

Yahoo! is a veteran in the tech world and has amassed hundreds of patents over the years with which to sue the pants of upstarts like Facebook. As with most patent discussions, look for innovations to your Facebook and Yahoo! pages to slow, if the lawsuits gain traction. Long live status updates and fantasy football. Hooray!