A Look at Facebook’s Patent Acquisitions

Intellectual-property advisors Envision IP analyzed patent acquisitions recorded by Facebook at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2013 and 2014, and it reported some interesting findings.

According to Envision IP:

• Facebook acquired 54 patents from Fujifilm, related to image and video data compression, server technology for image playback and transfer, and image editing and presentation systems. Envision IP highlighted U.S. Patent No. 7,617,279, which related to printing images via peer-to-peer networks, and 7,484,661, which covers a point-of-sale terminal for printing images.
• A total of 22 patents were acquired from AT&T, related to logging, aggregating and analyzing communications-related data, as well as determining relationships within a social network and personalized content delivery.
• The social network acquired 10 patents from Vega Vista, covering display and interface technologies for hand-held devices that incorporate inertial sensors, head and motion tracking technologies, and virtual displays.
• Facebook acquired six patents related to mobile check-ins from inventor Neeraj Jhanji.
• Three patents were acquired from Smartebook.com, covering location and navigation technologies.
• Three patents also came from Mobile Technologies, which was acquired by Facebook in August 2013, and those covered speech translation.
• One patent related to facial recognition came from Fawkes Acquisition and Face.com. Facebook acquired Face.com in June 2012.
• One patent related to search engines came from Truveo.

Envision IP also said of Facebook patents that originated within the company itself:

On another note, Envision IP identified 1,647 US patents currently assigned to Facebook. Initially, this figure indicates that the vast majority of patents owned by Facebook have been the result of acquisitions, instead of resulting from Facebook’s own research and development efforts.

However, Facebook currently owns 1,182 published, pending U.S. patent applications that it originally filed. Facebook has seen tremendous growth in its own patent application filings, from a mere 69 filings in 2009 to 649 in 2012. The rate of filings has been impressive, with a 158 percent increase in year-over-year filings from 2010 to 2011, and a 106 percent increase from 2011 to 2012.

Thus, while its current portfolio of issued patents has resulted primarily from third-party acquisitions, we expect the portfolio to contain an increasing number of original Facebook patents in the coming years as the company’s patent applications begin to issue.

Readers: What did you think of Envision IP’s findings?