Who’s Ready for the (Heaven Forbid) Social Networking Patent Wars?

Tech companies have recently ratcheted up their offensive use of intellectual property, especially in the mobile space — but not so much in social networking. Just in case patent wars happen to be contagious, it seems worth evaluating which social networking players are best-equipped.

• Facebook: Facebook told prospective investors that it has “56 issued patents and 503 filed patent applications in the United States and 33 corresponding patents and 149 filed patent applications in foreign countries relating to social networking, web technologies and infrastructure, and related technologies.”
• Google: Though Google hasn’t been a major social networking provider for all that long, it has 25 U.S. patents and 40 pending U.S. patent applications on the topic.