Yahoo was licensing patents Facebook bought from IBM (rumor)

Here's an interesting twist to the story. Facebook recently acquired some 750 patents from IBM (this started as a rumor that was later confirmed by Facebook itself). The patents cover various technologies such as software and networking, or so the rumor goes. Another rumor, however, suggests that the patents were purchased by Facebook not just to bolster its own portfolio, but because Yahoo was licensing some of them from IBM, according to a source cited by Law360.

Here's what I wrote in my previous article: "It's not clear how much Facebook paid for the patents, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was several hundreds of millions of dollars. The intellectual property may significantly help Menlo Park counter recent allegations of patent infringement. To get the help it needs, the social networking giant went straight to the source: IBM has topped the list of U.S. patent recipients for 19 straight years."

Now I'm thinking Facebook may have paid even more, because this clearly gives it a position of power over Yahoo, assuming the online giant still needs to license the IBM patents to keep its business running. As such, Facebook may be able to leverage this new bargaining chip to get Yahoo to drop its patent infringement suit, or at least the two will figure out a way to settle. This will largely depend on what type of license agreement Yahoo had with IBM, when it expires, and so on. Either way though, this appears to be a bold move by Facebook.

Last month, Yahoo threatened Facebook with patent war. Last week, the online giant sued the social networking giant over 10 patents and the technology industry made sure to criticize Yahoo like never before.

Some say Facebook should just buy Yahoo. Others think Microsoft should come to Facebook's rescue. A recent rumor, however, points to Facebook fighting back by itself, and this is looking more and more likely.

Yahoo has thousands of patents while Facebook has 62, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Those are the ones that have been filed in each of the companies' names; both firms have more patents each, but either way Yahoo has significantly more than Facebook.

In fact, Facebook now has over 800 patents in total (in addition to the ones from IBM, it has also purchased patents from Friendster and from HP). While that's still a far cry from Yahoo (remember, the Web giant has several thousand including those it has acquired over the years), Facebook now has enough patents, and possibly key ones, that it doesn't have to just surrender everything to Yahoo.

See also:

• Mitel sues Facebook over two patents
• Facebook to counter sue Yahoo (rumor)
• Yahoo sues Facebook over 10 patents
• Yahoo threatens Facebook with patent war
• Yahoo redesigns search results pages, adds more Facebook
• Yahoo redesigns image search, adds a dedicated Facebook tab