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The patent war between Facebook and Yahoo may be only just starting.

A new report says Facebook has acquired 750 patents from computer-systems giant IBM. The news comes shortly after Yahoo sued Facebook for patent infringement over 10 of its software patents.

A “person with knowledge of the transaction” tipped the news to Bloomberg Businessweek, though the deal hasn’t been made public yet.

Compared to other tech companies, Facebook’s arsenal of patents is rather meager: The company has just 56 patents compared with the thousands stockpiled by the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

However, the report says, Facebook has applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for at least 500 more. Apparently it didn’t want to wait for those to be approved and chose to take a shortcut in stocking up its patent portfolio.

The lawsuit from Yahoo, which has recently had a wholesale change in management and is expected to announce layoffs, likely provided the motivation.

SEE ALSO: Tech Industry Scorns Yahoo Over Facebook Patent Suit

Many tech companies are now using patents strategically to both generate revenue and discourage competition. For example, Google licenses many patents from Microsoft in the making of the Android platform, which provides a steady cash flow for Microsoft. In other cases, such as the many patent lawsuits between Apple and Samsung, patents are used to shut competitors out of entire regions (though that’s rarely the outcome).

IBM has been friendly in selling patents to younger tech companies in the past. In January, Google bought 217 patents from IBM, including one for a “semantic social network.”

Reps from Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. An IBM rep declined comment.

What do you think of Facebook’s patent grab? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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When Yahoo threatened to sue Facebook over patent infringement, it didn’t win many friends. Then, when it actually went ahead with its lawsuit earlier this week, it promptly made a lot of enemies.

Many in the tech industry have spoken out either against Yahoo or about the absurdity of patent law in general. Various observers have called Yahoo’s patent suit everything from “preposterous” to “pathetic and heartbreaking” to (of course) “desperate.”

According to venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who calls the suit a “crock of sh-t,” Yahoo crossed an “unspoken line” in suing another web company over patents. There hasn’t been a unique idea in the web space for more than a decade, he says, and Yahoo’s opening itself up to be sued by someone else over “bogus” patents.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who has spoken publicly about reforming patent law in the past, says he would like to see Yahoo destroy Facebook with its lawsuit. It’s not because he believes Yahoo is in the right, but because he thinks a massive verdict — on the order of $50 billion — would make consumers take notice, and perhaps spark the needed reform.

Most interesting was Andy Baio, who wrote in Wired about his experience as a Yahoo employee. Yahoo acquired his company, Upcoming.org, in 2005, and shortly afterward asked him to file patents on his software as part of campaign to stockpile intellectual property. Baio says he was given assurances that Yahoo’s patents would only be used defensively. Now Baio says Yahoo was essentially “weaponizing” his work and its current lawsuit is an “insult” to him and other engineers who filed patents on its behalf.

SEE ALSO: 5 Things Yahoo’s New CEO Must Do Now

Most reactions, while clearly and sometimes virulently anti-Yahoo, aren’t necessarily pro-Facebook. For its part, the social network — which is in an SEC-mandated quiet period as it awaits it hotly anticipated IPO — has only said it’s disappointed and will defend itself “vigorously.”

It’s also notable that no one is talking about whether or not Yahoo actually has a good case as far as the letter of the law is concerned. If history is any indication, it probably does. Almost 10 years ago, Yahoo sued Google over its pay-per-click patent, which it alleged Google was infringing on with its AdWords service. The two eventually settled.

However, in this case, the 10 patents Yahoo is claiming Facebook is violating apply to many web services. As this summary from paidContent points out, the technologies involved cover everything from having a customized homepage to sharing items only with selected friends to sending an instant message over an email system. If successful in its suit, Yahoo could be emboldened to go after Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare and a host of other social services.

Patent expert Florian Mueller said on Twitter that he suspects Yahoo “just wants to cash in” with the lawsuit, but it could have trouble doing that for two reasons: 1) The patents are relatively young, with nine out of 10 of them issued between 2007 and 2010, and 2) Facebook can see from recent history that patent lawsuits take time and rarely lead to disaster.

How do you regard Yahoo now that it’s declared a patent war on Facebook? Web pariah, or just a business looking out for itself? Have your say in the comments.

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BONUS: Twitter Responds to Yahoo’s Suit Against Facebook

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@randizuckerberg

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Yahoo on Monday made good on its promise to sue Facebook, alleging in a complaint that Facebook violated 10 patents.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., makes a case that Yahoo innovated on several fronts, including messaging, news feed generation, social commenting advertising display, preventing click fraud and privacy controls.

“Facebook was not launched until 2004, 10 years after Yahoo was founded,” the complaint reads. “Facebook has since grown to be one of the most widely trafficked sites on the Internet. That growth, however, has been based in a large part on Facebook’s use of Yahoo’s patented technology.”

The complaint also quotes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as acknowledging that “getting there first is not what it’s all about.” Further on, it states, “Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology.”

Yahoo’s suit, which seeks unspecified damages, comes at an awkward time for Facebook. The social networking giant is expected to launch an IPO in May to raise $5 billion. Yahoo, meanwhile, risks being seen as desperate in engaging in patent trolling as its revenues and market share continue to slip.

The suit comes after Yahoo and Facebook were apparently unable to work out an agreement over the issue. Yahoo was in talks with Facebook over its patent claims last month, according to a report in The New York Times. At the time, Yahoo was threatening a lawsuit if Facebook didn’t pay licensing fees, according to the report.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Eric Hayes

Complaint for Patent Infringement

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Yahoo wants Facebook to start paying for its right to use various Internet technologies that Yahoo says it holds patents for.

If Yahoo aggressively pursues a strategy of asserting its intellectual-property rights, it could lead to a new phase of patent wars, this one involving some of the biggest names in social networking.

In a statement first reported by The New York Times, Yahoo told Mashable it “has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to protect its intellectual property.”

“We have invested substantial resources into these innovations,” the statement continued. “We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights.”

Yahoo also said other “web and technology companies” had licensed its technology, but it refused to name any of them when asked.

The patents Yahoo holds involve many different technologies for helping websites deal with data and multiple users. One such patent even has to do with “Centralized registration for distributed social content services.”

That patent appears to apply to basic functionality to any social network, including entering personal information and selecting which parts of it are visible to others.

A spokesperson for Facebook told the Times, “Yahoo contacted us the same time they called The New York Times and so we haven’t had the opportunity to fully evaluate their claims.”

SEE ALSO: Yahoo’s New Visualization Beautifully Shows What’s Happening on the Web

Yahoo’s IP threat is an ominous sign that the world of web platforms could be in for an era of legal infighting similar to what has happened around phones and mobile technology in recent years. In addition to Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft hold many patents that deal with the modern web.

Amazon, for example, holds a patent on a “social networking system capable of notifying users of profile updates made by their contacts,” which also sounds like basic Facebook functionality.

The move also helps define the new Yahoo. Over the past several months, Yahoo fired its CEO, hired a new one, and saw one of its co-founders and its chairman leave for good.

From the appointment of current CEO and former PayPal guru Scottt Thompson, Yahoo appears to want to make a name for itself as a tech company again.

Does starting a patent war with Facebook serve that strategy? It’s hard to say, though it’s a bold if odd choice as the first order of business for the “new Yahoo.”

Is Yahoo right that Facebook is infringing on its IP and should pay up? Or is this just a dinosaur Internet company’s last roar? Sound off in the comments.

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BONUS: How Yahoo’s New CEO Can Make the Company Relevant Again

1. Get Back Into Search

Yahoo partnered with Microsoft to have Bing power its search engine a couple of years ago, part of a deal that let Yahoo run advertising for both. While the arrangement may make sense from a financial standpoint, it robs Yahoo of direct control over one of its primary products, and strengthen's Bing's brand more than Yahoo's. Sure, most people familiar with tech were using Google or Bing anyway, but the move basically told them to never come back.

Those tech-savvy people are influencers, and Yahoo needs to win them back if it's ever going to grow again. Ending its soul-leasing deal with Microsoft would free Yahoo up to innovate in one area most associated with the brand. Yes, Google is the 400-megaton gorilla in the room, but ceding the search-engine war when you're primary business is advertising is like saying you'll fight, but you're leaving the heavy weapons at home.

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Google got a late Christmas gift in the form of 217 patents, acquired by way of IBM. While the patents cover a variety of topics, one in particular could give the search giant a new tool for its social network, Google+.

The patents cover many different technologies, but they mainly deal with data services like email management, online calendars and transferring web apps between devices. The patent grab, first reported by SEO by the Sea and confirmed to Mashable by Google, potentially serves two purposes: providing avenues to develop new products, and providing ammunition in litigation.

The latter reason is undoubtedly the primary one. The search giant had previously received more than 2,000 patents from IBM over the past year, a year that’s seen an unprecedented amount of lawsuits in the field of patent law. Most notoriously, Apple has sued, in one form or another, many companies involved in building devices for the Android platform, including HTC, LG, and Motorola. Apple even won a recent case, which effectively forces HTC to stop selling certain devices in the U.S. or create a software fix.

By shoring up its patent portfolio, Google will be that much stronger when in its defense of Android. A big reason behind the company’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility this past summer was to get its hands on Motorola’s large cache of patents (24,000, including pending ones).

On the product development side, it’s anyone’s guess which of the IBM patents may become future products, but social-media watchers might be interested in U.S. Patent 7,865,592: “Using semantic networks to develop a social network.”

The patent details how a social network could be leveraged to lead users to find “experts” or like-minded enthusiasts on specific topics. As the patent’s summary describes, “A method, apparatus and program product are provided for identifying common interests between users of a communication network. … [Interests] may be determined, for example, by calculating a ratio of the number of words in a content source to the time spent viewing the content.”

For example, you may want to find someone knowledgeable about real estate in a specific neighborhood to ask for buying advice. But the right person may not list that as an “interest,” so you may not be able to easily find them in your expanded network (which includes friends of friends). A semantic network would find the right person to talk to by analyzing which people in your network post content having to do with the specific topic, and how much time others spend reading it.

Might we see a Google+ expand its abilities someday with the semantic social network patent? And is it something you’d be interested in? Let us know in the comments.

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