• Forbes, Tuesday, November 8, 2011 1:08 PM

Despite the recent ruckus over patent value, few have considered its implications for Yahoo and a potential sale of the company. They should, however, analysts and investors tell Forbes. “There are very few companies in the search, ad, and social networking space with the size and quality of patent portfolio that Yahoo possesses,” says Erin-Michael Gill, Managing Director and Chief Intellectual Property Officer of MBD Capital Group. “What’s also interesting is that the portfolio has value apart from Yahoo’s business itself and could be sold in a separate transaction.”

Presently, Yahoo has 1,100 US patents granted and 2,661 applications pending in the U.S., according to Forbes, which explains that Yahoo has “valuable patents related to: display ads, social networking, Inktomi’s spider search technology, processing unsolicited bulk e-mail, transmission of multicast media between networks, digital content management (both content creation and content distribution), and data center management.”

Meanwhile, of particular note, “Of all the companies that Yahoo (or its owner) could go after for violating intellectual property rights, perhaps the most intriguing is Facebook,” Forbes writes.

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