Facebook Countersuing Mitel Using Old AOL Patents

Last March, Mitel Networks filed a patent lawsuit against Facebook.  Now Facebook is countersuing Mitel Networks with their own patent lawsuit.  Facebook is claiming that Mitel is infringing on two of their U.S. patents: 7,778,396 and 7,454,709.  The patents are related to a “telephone status notification system” and “user definable on-line co-user lists.”

Both of these patents were purchased by Facebook in April 2012.  The two patents were in a patent portfolio that Facebook acquired for $550 million from Microsoft.  Microsoft had acquired those patents from AOL in a portfolio worth $1 billion.

The inventors of this patent are Barry Appelman, Yossi Vardi, and Yair Goldfinger.  Facebook also filed a motion to have Mitel’s lawsuit dismissed, which is pending in a Delaware court.