Yahoo! is suing Facebook for patent infringement.

Now, the predictable, sophomoric fear-mongering stuff is coming out again. For example, Andy Baio, whose name is on eight Yahoo! patents, opines:

“…Software patents should be abolished, plain and simple. Software is already covered by copyright, making patent protection unnecessary.

Ask any programmer — developing software is as creative and unique as writing poetry…”

Yes, Andy, software is “covered” by copyright… but it is incredibly easy to design around a copyright for a computer program.

And, just why should there be an exception in the patent law for software?

Cannot software inventions be innovative?

Then why not patent protection for them?

It is always difficult to try to quantify the quality of a company’s patent portfolio, but each year the IEEE Spectrum publishes their Patent Power Scorecard, which is a compilation of innovation scores of companies by industry category.

IEEE Spectrum uses a modeling system for determining “quality” based on variables such as “Pipeline Growth”, “Pipeline Impact”, “Pipeline Generality”, and “Pipeline Originality”. Without going into detail, these metrics are based on such things as how many other patents in the same field cite the patent, and the variety of technologies that build on the technology disclosed in the patent Companies with technology leadership will tend to have patents which others cite and build upon.

So the #1 company in the category of “Communication / Internet Services” is (drum roll) Yahoo!