Friendster’s announcement Tuesday of an approved patent on compatibility scoring between users is the latest in a series of attempts to "own" some of the basic functionality behind social networking.
And while it may or may not be secretly plotting to take on the new big boys in court, it’s certainly building up a hefty arsenal to do so.
Patents give the owner the right to control the use of whatever is patented – process, machine, article of manufacture, compositions of matter or any new useful improvement on one. There may be a defensive motive to obtaining a patent – to ensure that you will be able to do whatever the patent protects. But by the same token a patent holder can prevent its use by others and, more to the point, profit from their use of it.
“Friendster’s patent portfolio is one of several assets of the company. Friendster anticipates receiving more patents, and we will continue to focus on growing our large global business into an even larger one,” said CEO Richard Kimber in a statement.
Friendster applied for a dozen patents back in 2003 and won its first back in July of 2006, which got quite a bit of attention as it was basically considered a “patent on social networking.”
It has also since won three others, giving it rights over some of the basic fundamentals of social networking: establishing connections, distributing and sharing content, managing connections over time and assessing compatibility between users.
“In this case here, they have a portfolio. They’re probably going to rattle their saber a little bit,” said David Lowry, an intellectual property attorney with Banner & Witcoff LTD. “If you’re going to get patents and not enforce them, you’re not going get a huge amount out of them,” he said.
The site has recently been eclipsed by Facebook and MySpace in the
U.S. but has since turned its focus on Asia (where it’s now number one with over 65 million registered users) and brought on Kimber as the new
CEO.
Friendster spokesman Jeff Roberto reiterated Kimber’s statement that the patents are simply an asset to the company, but he wouldn’t discuss plans for any future litigation.
“Our position has always been to document innovation and to build a world class patent portfolio,” he said. “If you look at companies like
Google and Amazon, they’re doing the same things.”
“We have several options in the air and we are reviewing those options,” he added.
Social network Six Degrees won a patent in 2001 that is very similar to Friendster’s. It was ultimately purchased by LinkedIn to protect itself against
Friendster when it won funding in 2003 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield
& Byers who urged them to apply for more patents.
But it may not mean an onslaught of lawsuits as the company could just be looking to licensing deals to make some money. Back in 2006, then-president Kent Lindstrom was hesitant to file any suits.
“Any kind of businessperson would say, ‘Hey, we're going to prosecute this to the full extent we can and get every penny we can out of it,’“ he said. “But we do work in a community of businesses and don't want to just cause trouble if there is no reason for it.”
The other major social networks all have quite a bit of applications for patents themselves but few if any that have been approved. This process can take up to five years.
LinkedIn’s five or so requests that we found include “searching and reference checking within social networks” and the “method and system for reputation evaluation of online users in a social networking scheme.” Facebook is looking to own the “system and method for giving gifts and displaying assets in a social network environment” and the
“system and method for curtailing objectionable behavior in a web-based social network.”
The patent language certainly gets confusing, and new stories about “patent trolls” who target big names get quite a bit of media attention. But many of them also dissolve as quickly as they arise.
“At the end of the day, a lot of this stuff is overblown,” said Lowry.
