Facebook Pays Half an Instagram to Protect Itself from Yahoo’s Patent Lawsuit

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Ben Parr| 6 Comments

From Facebook’s newsroom:

“Microsoft Corp. and Facebook announced today a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will assign to Facebook the right to purchase a portion of the patent portfolio it recently agreed to acquire from AOL Inc. Facebook has agreed to purchase this portion for $550 million in cash.

In the initial AOL auction, Microsoft secured the ability to own or assign approximately 925 U.S. patents and patent applications plus a license to AOL’s remaining patent portfolio, which contains approximately 300 additional patents that were not for sale.”

$550 Million. That’s half an Instagram. Think about that.

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  • Anonymous

     The Facebook bubble is going to burst spectacularly at some stage. Not saying soon, but at some stage.

  • Anonymous

    Seems to be lots of defensive manoeuvring from facebook here (taking Instagram purchase as a defensive action).

    Completely securing position before IPO?

    • http://thenextlab.com/ Steven

      Jup, Looks like Facebook is trying to do everything that won’t make investors happy after IPO. 

      Basically they are doing laundry so they can start clean after IPO. 

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