[lucasjake]

What people don't understand is, patents legally are valued under the legal standard of roughly 'patents that win in court are real patents, those that lose, are not' This means that patents MUST be defended to even really be a patent. This means that, this scenario is almost automatic when a company like Facebook comes up for IPO. Facebook is one of those companies that essentially is 'The Internet' in 2012 on the timeline of companies that have held that title, (Yahoo, Google, Facebook).

This lawsuit will be settled, and then Facebook, Apple, Yahoo-Alibaba, Microsoft, AOL, and everyone else will resume the world war against Google.

Amateur hour in some of the analysis in these articles.

[rdl]

Patents aren't like trademarks -- it's not "defend it or lose it".

It's quite reasonable to have a huge patent portfolio of crap patents, keep them around to use as defensive ammunition (to deter being sued, or as a threat when sued), and not to be a punk ass bitch like Yahoo is now by trying to enforce them against a company contributing an order of magnitude (or two, or three) times more value to the world.

Yes, if a patent fails to stand up in court, it is no longer real, but if never use a bogus-but-issued patent, no one really tests its validity.

This action was entirely voluntary on Yahoo's part, which is why they must suffer. Seriously, if anyone competent is left at Yahoo, quit and get a job at a real company. Being an H1B is really the only reason I can imagine staying there, and I'm sure a competent person can find a replacement employer in the current market.