Yahoo is “seeking to force Facebook into licensing 10 to 20 patents over technologies that include advertising, the personalization of Web sites, social networking and messaging,” according to the New York Times.

(Reuters) – The bubble in mobile phone technology patent values may just have popped.

Now that Google Inc. has agreed to a $12.5 billion deal to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. — scooping up a trove of 17,000 phone-related patents to give itself some ground to defend its Android operating system — the most motivated buyer looks to be off the market.

“The game is completely changed as a result of Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The arms race is essentially over,” said John Amster, chief executive of RPX, a company that advises customers on patent purchases. “They have basically created through acquisition what they needed.”

Google’s move was widely seen as a response to its loss in the auction of 6,000 Nortel patents to a group led by Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Research in Motion, which fetched an unprecedented …

Give Google credit for lighting the fuse with its harangue last week entitled “When Patents Attack Android.” Now investors and entrepreneurs are weighing in on the heels of a Department of Justice probe. This weekend, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban offered a scathing assessment of the troubled patent system on his blog when he claimed [...]