Facebook可能反诉雅虎侵权

    今年二月，科技博客TechCrunch也采访了吉尔，让他谈谈他的分析。吉尔推断道：“等领导层变更发生后”——也就是在前贝宝（PayPal）总裁斯科特•汤普森取代去年九月离职的卡萝尔•巴茨成为雅虎CEO后，雅虎一定会有所行动。

    Facebook的确被打了个措手不及。Facebook2月27日收到雅虎的专利要求，《纽约时报》（the New York Times）当天已经把这个消息捅了出去。（雅虎的诉状也承认，它是在2月27号当天才首次向Facebook告知其专利主张。）

    Facebook昨天的声明也揪着这点不放：“雅虎作为Facebook的长期商业伙伴，作为一家通过与Facebook的合作获得了大量好处的公司（这显然指的是Facebook去年去年9月将雅虎的一款新闻应用整合到了全新改版的网站上），决定对我们发起法律诉讼，我们对此非常失望。我们又一次地与媒体同时得知雅虎的决定。”

    经历井喷式增长的年轻公司往往会被对手借专利问题发难，这种情况并不鲜见。比如最近大获成功的谷歌（Google）安卓手机操作系统就是个例子。谷歌突然在一个成熟的手机生态系统里横插了一杠子，但它一开始也没有足够的专利保护。这显然就是谷歌去年八月斥巨资（125亿美元）收购摩托罗拉移动（Motorola Mobility）背后的动机——主要就是看上了摩托罗拉大量的专利资产。

    吉尔表示，当他开始研究Facebook自己的专利时，他惊讶地发现，对于一家年轻公司来说，Facebook拥有一些相当重要的专利资产，可以用来与雅虎打专利战。尤其是其中一项专利在雅虎自己的专利申请里曾经被“引用”过12次之多。这项专利和其他8项专利都是Facebook在2010年2月向惠普公司（Hewlett-Packard）购买的。美国法律规定，一名发明人在进行专利申请时，必须把所有可能与本发明相关的在先专利都列出来。知识产权分析师通过分析这些引文，就可以知道谁“参考”了谁。另据吉尔的调查，Facebook去年八月还向沃克数码（Walker Digital）购买了11项专利，去年12月向飞利浦（Philips）购买了11项专利。

    现在看来，Facebook的未雨绸缪之策相当明智。他说：“他们已经预见到了这种情况，因此试图建立起正确的专利资产来保护自己。”不过吉尔仍然认为，Facebook要想跟雅虎达成一种互不相欠、一报还一报的交叉许可协议，一分钱也不给雅虎，可能很困难，因为Facebook的专利资产还“没达到那么充实的地步”。

    吉尔认为，随着IPO日期的临近，Facebook肯定不想让潜在投资者担心这样一些问题，比如“万一Facebook必须得绕开这10项专利怎么办？这是否意味着它的产品和用户体验优化不足？”为了解决这个问题，彻底杜绝后患，Facebook可能会愿意付给雅虎一大笔钱。吉尔指出，等到IPO过后，为长远计，Facebook将会在一个更有利的位置上进行一些“像样的知识产权收购”，以进一步加强专利组合。

    译者：朴成奎

    In February, Gill was also interviewed by blog TechCrunch about his analysis. Gill speculates that "when leadership change occurred" -- former PayPal (EBAY) president Scott Thompson became Yahoo's CEO in January, replacing Carol Bartz, who had been ousted last September -- Yahoo must have decided to act.

    Facebook has indeed, maintained that it was blindsided when it received Yahoo's patent demands on February 27, the same day the New York Times broke the story. (Yahoo's complaint acknowledges that it first notified Facebook of its claims on that date.)

    Facebook's statement yesterday stuck to that theme: "We're disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook" -- apparent references to Facebook's integration of a Yahoo News application into its site last November -- "has decided to resort to litigation. Once again, we learned of Yahoo's decision simultaneously with the media."

    It is common for young companies that experience explosive growth to find themselves vulnerable to patent challenges. The recent success of Google's (GOOG) Android operating system, for instance, suddenly thrust that company into the midst of a mature mobile phone ecosystem for which it did not, at first, have adequate patent protection. This was apparently the driving motivation behind Google's expensive decision, announced last August, to acquire Motorola Mobility -- and its rich patent portfolio -- for $12.5 billion.

    When Gill researched Facebook's own patents, he says, he was surprised to see that, for a young company, it actually had some significant assets of its own to yield defensively against Yahoo, including one broad patent in particular -- acquired along with eight others from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in February 2010 -- that has been "referenced" 12 times by Yahoo in its own patent applications. When an inventor files a patent application, he must, by law, list all prior patents that might conceivably be relevant; IP analysts use these citations to get some rough notion of who is playing in who's sandbox. Facebook also acquired 11 Walker Digital patents last August, and 11 Philips patents in December, according to Gill's research.

    Now, those moves look wise. "They've been anticipating this, trying to build up the right sort of portfolio to protect themselves," he says. Still, Gill suspects that their portfolio is "not quite fleshed out to the point" where it could force a clean, tit-for-tat, cross-licensing deal, with no money changing hands.

    With the IPO approaching, he predicts, Facebook will not want potential investors worrying about questions like, "What if it has to design around 10 patents? Will that mean a suboptimized product? A suboptimized user experience?" The company will likely be willing to pay a substantial sum to get this problem behind it and never have to worry about it again, he says. After the IPO Facebook will be in a better position to do "serious IP acquisitions," Gill notes, to further shore up its portfolio for the long haul.