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Yahoo swings again at Facebook in patent war

The Yahoo-Facebook slugfest apparently won't be over any time soon, with Yahoo now asserting that Facebook is infringing on two more patents.

Paul Sloan Former Editor
Paul Sloan is editor in chief of CNET News. Before joining CNET, he had been a San Francisco-based correspondent for Fortune magazine, an editor at large for Business 2.0 magazine, and a senior producer for CNN. When his fingers aren't on a keyboard, they're usually on a guitar. Email him here.
Paul Sloan
2 min read

Updated 12:30 PM P.T. Now it's Yahoo's turn.

Yahoo today replied in court to Facebook's countersuit, and now asserts that Facebook is infringing on two more patents -- up from the 10 patents named in its initial suit against Facebook.

In today's filing, Yahoo denies that it violates any of the Facebook patents cites in Facebook's countersuit, and argues that "Facebook lacks a good faith basis for most, if not all, of its counterclaims, particularly those patents that it purchased from others." In a statement, Facebook said that it remains "perplexed by Yahoo's erratic actions" and that it disagreed with these latest claims. The company added that it will continue to defend itself "vigorously."

The two patents that Yahoo added to the suit include one that covers a "system and method to determine the validity of and interaction on a network" and another for a "system and method allowing advertisers to manage search listings in a pay for placement search system using grouping. You can read them in their full-text glory below."

In a statement, Yahoo said:

Today's filing underscores the breadth of Facebook's violation of Yahoo!'s intellectual property. As we have stated previously, Yahoo!'s technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. We intend to vigorously protect these technologies for our customers and shareholders.

You can check out the whole filing here:

Yahoo reply to Facebook counterclaims