In the complaint filed yesterday in the Northern District of California, Yahoo! asserted 10 patents – Nos. 6,907,566; 7,100,111; 7,373,599; 7,668,861; 7,269,590; 7,599,935; 7,454,509; 5,983,227; 7,747,648; and 7,406,501 – covering advertising, privacy, customisation, social networking and messaging technology.
“For much of the technology upon which Facebook is based, Yahoo! got there first and was therefore granted patents by the United States Patent Office to protect those innovations,” said Yahoo! in the complaint.
In the complaint, Yahoo! touted its innovations, from customised webpages and pay-per-click advertising to electronic...