Leave Yahoo! Alone
Online tech blogs are masturbating over the news Yahoo! has finally lodged an official suit against Facebook for allegedly violating patents that it owns the rights to. Sure, the patents are heavily broad and the criteria of the patents Facebook are supposedly breaching would easily apply to Google, Posterous, Twitter and <insert any social site here>. I hope Yahoo! succeeds and the awarded amount is ridiculously high because it’ll highlight just how ridiculous the patent system actually is especially when you can be awarded a patent for something crazy like, “Hardware responds to user finger touch utilising mathematical equations to determine velocity, direction and intent” – that’s not a real patent that I know of, there is probably something similar.
Yahoo! isn’t the first
What really gets in my grill about this whole situation is that one site ie. Mashable or Techcrunch post an article claiming how ridiculous Yahoo!’s claims are, then the ball starts rolling. People are acting like Yahoo! are the first company to protect their IP by suing another company. Does a company by the name of Oracle ring a bell? If you want to talk patent trolling, read up a little bit on Oracle’s incredibly aggressive patent litigation history.
There’s another company, in-fact one of the biggest technology companies in the world: Apple. Much like Oracle and the many other companies that have done something similar aggressively targeting everyone to protect their IP, Apple have claimed to have come up with the idea for tablet computers for Christs sake, amongst other things.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
Sure Yahoo! might be making a pretty low move here, but it’s not Yahoo!’s fault the patent system is completely broken and any company not just Yahoo! if they can (and legally) take up any chance to sue if it means a potentially large payout. We are talking about a company with stakeholders here, the moment any company takes any form of financial interest is the very moment they lose the ability to make their own choices.
Yahoo! isn’t the first and won’t be the last. But what comes of this situation could have repercussions for every other company out there. I don’t understand how a company that hasn’t really got a issue of being an overly aggressive patent troll can be hated on so much when companies like Apple are suing both big and small companies everyday, Oracle are still trolling as are Microsoft and a slew of other companies. Wake the fuck up people, stop looking for a scapegoat to fill your monthly article quota.