I mentioned this on another thread, I and I think its worth repeating here: what a disappointing step for Y!'s new CEO to take. I have to think that Yahoo is looking to lever an early settlement because of Facebook's pending IPO - a quick way to make some gains. Regardless, I think it is a wasteful way to do business.<p>Yahoo! is a media company, Facebook is a networking/platform company. They should be looking for ways to work together and build value instead of attacking each other and destroying it.<p>This smells more like an ego-driven decision more than anything else. What an incredible waste of time for Yahoo. Yahoo has so many problems on so many other fronts and the last thing they need to do is draw themselves into another battle.
> Investors will be placing their bets on who they believe has the better legal standing and lawyers in this new patent war<p>Surely investors will be placing their bets on what the minimum amount of money that Yahoo! will take to go away and get out of the way of the IPO.<p>Or have people been living under a rock and actually think that legal standing and lawyers make the slightest difference in resolving patent battles of this sort?
I think both of these companies have lost sight of why these websites even exist in the first place. A trait that is not limited to these two companies alone... I'm looking forward to new innovation the future brings, because IP battles like this are starting to looking like crackheads fighting over the last rock.
<p><pre><code> U.S. Patent No.7,406,501
System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail
protocol
Abstract
Systems and methods allowing an instant messaging user to exchange messages with an e-mail user.
To the instant messaging user, the experience is a seamless exchange of instant messages; to the
e-mail user, the experience is a seamless exchange of e-mail messages. Conversion of an instant
message to an e-mail message includes insertion of a token into the e-mail message, and conversion
of an e-mail message to an instant message includes validating a token extracted from the e-mail
message.
</code></pre>
It looks like GMail is also infringing that patent.
Here is a great response to the news (sorry if already posted somewhere on HN):<p><a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/yahoo-crosses-the-line.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/yahoo-crosses-the-line.html</a>