Patents or execution? What's more important in technology?
What happened to the Silicon Valley mantra that execution is more important than patents? The back-and-forth on patents for social networking makes you think otherwise. First Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams bragged they had over a dozen patent applications underway, then Friendster competitors (and early investors), LinkedIn and Tribe.net swooped in and acquired a patent supposed to be the basis of many of the current social networking sites in a story first broken by CNET News.com. According to this New York Times story (registration required):
Friendster, one of the better-known social networking sites and, at nine months, one of the oldest, has been joined by sites like Tickle, Zero Degrees, Spoke and Ryze. Spoke, a networking site for salespeople, has boasted that it has 15 pending patent applications, although the applications have not yet been published, and the company has not disclosed details.
Now come Tribe and LinkedIn, sites started last summer, whose owners paid $700,000 in September to YouthStream Media Networks for United States patent No. 6,175,831, also known as the "six degrees patent," which they consider the seminal social networking patent. It covers an online software platform that allows users to build relationship networks. Andrew Katz, a lawyer with Fox Rothschild who specializes in Internet intellectual property deals, said, "This is probably the pioneer patent out there." Mr. Katz, who said he had no financial interest in either Tribe or LinkedIn, added, "It should be taken very seriously by everybody in the industry because it is in the hands of people who have the means and the business acumen to enforce it properly."