Facebook Accuses Yahoo of Infringing on Patents - NYTimes.com

Yahoo produces innovation -- in the form of a Facebook countersuit

"In an interesting twist, Facebook employees invented only two of the technologies covered by the patents that it cites in its filing. The rest appear to have been purchased, since some of the patents were granted before Facebook was founded in 2004. For instance, three of the patents were granted to Alexander Tuzhilin, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, while two were granted to Chris Cheah, an entrepreneur in California.
Facebook’s counterclaim also shows the continued friction between two companies that have cooperated on several initiatives. Yahoo has integrated the social network’s popular news activity feature, into its own sites. The net effect had been to bolster Yahoo’s traffic from Facebook users by about 300 percent from September to December alone, Yahoo has said.
The decision to strike an increasingly important partner was viewed by some analysts as a reckless move by Yahoo, viewed as an aging Internet giant."

Facebook Accuses Yahoo of Infringing on Patents - NYTimes.com