Yahoo’s popular photo-sharing community Flickr has been called out as one of the primary properties infringing on Facebook patents in the social network’s counterclaim, which it filed Tuesday.
Facebook responded to a March patent suit brought against it by one-time-Valley-friend Yahoo with a counterclaim alleging violation of 10 patents. The social network claims that Yahoo’s homepage and content optimization engine infringe on Facebook patents. Yahoo News, Sports, Games, Finance, Autos, Movies, Shopping, and Travel properties also infringe on Facebook patents in the way they serve advertisements to visitors, Facebook argues.
Flickr, however, was given the star treatment, and fingered in particular for its violation of two patents (embedded below) around feed personalization and content tagging.
Patent 7,827,208, or the ‘208 patent as its referred to in the suit, is the “Generating a Feed of Stories Personalized for Members of a Social Network.” Facebook argues that the Flickr Photostream, Recent Activity, and Groups Activity features all infringe on this particular patent.
On the tagging front, Facebook owns the patent for Tagging Digital Media (patent 7,945,653) and claims that Flickr’s People in Photos, a tagging feature similar to Facebook’s offering, infringes on its intellectual property.
In all instances, Facebook calls for a cease and desist verdict.
“Facebook has been irreparably harmed by Yahoo!’s infringement, for which there is no adequate remedy at law, and such harm will continue unless Yahoo! is enjoined by this Court,” the social network said in the suit.
Angry finger pointing photo via Vlue/Shutterstock
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