3 ms·

> spiral out of control with everyone suing everyone for every patent they have in Silicon Valley. That misses the real dynamic: Yahoo is suing because FB has

> spiral out of control with everyone suing everyone for every patent they have in Silicon Valley. That misses the real dynamic: Yahoo is suing because FB has money + they don't have as deep of a patent portfolio. (It's why Google shelled out a pile of dough for Nortel's portfolio.) The lawsuit wouldn't have happened if they had comparable portfolios; The lawsuits would then have ended in a draw. Bullying/shakedown at its best. (I'm sure it's not personal to Scott Thompson, just business.)

tomjen3 15y ago
Nah FB can drag this through the court system for years or even decades and then find some way to kill Yahoo in the meantime. FB must have made a lot of improvements in online ads, which as far as I am aware, is what makes Yahoo money (side note, do Yahoo actually earn money?) so that would be an obvious place to attack. An alternative is to team up with Microsoft, who desperately needs some sort of social media strategy and have very very extensive patent portfolios.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  > Nah FB can drag this through the court system for years or even decades and then find some way to kill Yahoo in the meantime. It's a big distraction for FB. It's not a distraction for Y! (because obviously they don't have much business left in their business). So my guess is that FB settles to get it off their plate. If FB instead takes the strategy you mention above and blows all that money, I'd love them to death for it. ("You wanna piece of me?! Come over here and let's rumble!" It would tell patent trolls that they are going to have to blow serious money in the future.)
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Define distraction? You would need, say 10 full time lawyers on it, assume 200k/year on average, which would cost about 2 million a year. Mark doesn't need to focus on the law suit, instead he can simply spawn of a process and subscribe to its signals (to borrow an OS metaphor).

tomjen3 15y ago

Nah FB can drag this through the court system for years or even decades and then find some way to kill Yahoo in the meantime. FB must have made a lot of improvements in online ads, which as far as I am aware, is what makes Yahoo money (side note, do Yahoo actually earn money?) so that would be an obvious place to attack. An alternative is to team up with Microsoft, who desperately needs some sort of social media strategy and have very very extensive patent portfolios.

jpdoctor 15y ago
> Nah FB can drag this through the court system for years or even decades and then find some way to kill Yahoo in the meantime. It's a big distraction for FB. It's not a distraction for Y! (because obviously they don't have much business left in their business). So my guess is that FB settles to get it off their plate. If FB instead takes the strategy you mention above and blows all that money, I'd love them to death for it. ("You wanna piece of me?! Come over here and let's rumble!" It would tell patent trolls that they are going to have to blow serious money in the future.)
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Define distraction? You would need, say 10 full time lawyers on it, assume 200k/year on average, which would cost about 2 million a year. Mark doesn't need to focus on the law suit, instead he can simply spawn of a process and subscribe to its signals (to borrow an OS metaphor).