Yahoo is officially making a move against Facebook today. AllThingsD.com reports that Yahoo has filed a huge lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that the social networking service is in violation of a number of Yahoo"s patents. The patents themselves involve online advertising as well as social networking features.
In Yahoo"s official statement, the company said it has spend a lot of money and time developing the patents that it has licensed out to other companies. It added, "Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail.”
Facebook has already issued its own response to the Yahoo lawsuit, claiming that Yahoo hasn"t made much of an effort to resolve these alleged issues with Facebook before today"s court action. Facebook"s statement says:
We’re disappointed that Yahoo’s effort to engage with us was limited to a few short phone calls and that we continue to learn of new developments about a long-time partner through the press. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.
Yahoo used to be one of the biggest forces on the Internet but it has seen its importance diminish in the past few years thanks in part to the rise of companies such as Facebook and Google. Yahoo saw its co-founder Jerry Yang depart the company earlier in 2012. It also hired a new CEO, former PayPal president Scott Thompson, this year.