California - Facebook has been issued yet another patent related to the News Feed, almost six years after filing for it. Granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the new patent lists co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg as one of the inventors.

The News Feed patent is described as: "Communicating a news feed of media content based on a member's interactions in a social network environment." The invention allows Facebook to let users not only view status messages, photos, and links to videos of online friends, but also particular actions their friends are taking. Such actions could include commenting on posts from other users or playing games.

Facebook's U.S. Patent No. 8,171,128 is further described as: "a system and method for providing dynamically selected media content to someone using an electronic device in a social network environment. Items of media content are selected for the user based on his or her relationships with one or more other users. The user's relationships with other users are reflected in the selected media content and its format. An order is assigned to the items of media content, for example, based on their anticipated importance to the user, and the items of media content are displayed to the user in the assigned order. The user may change the order of the items of media content. The user's interactions with media content available in the social network environment are monitored, and those interactions are used to select additional items of media content for the user."

In its application, Facebook described its method of allowing users to view certain status updates, pictures, links to videos, and their friends' actions. The patent will let Facebook keep a profile of each user on the social network in a database, then identify the relationships between users, generating "stories" based on the connections with each other, and then creating a News Feed for each user.

The patent will also allow Facebook to monitor what actions the viewer takes in response to the stories, such as Liking, Sharing, or Commenting, and then uses that data to generate more stories.

California - A new patent that has been recently granted to Apple has the potential of locking Facebook out of a much sought after area of growth, which is using credits to acquire such "media items" as songs, videos, images, e-books, and podcasts. The definition of "digital asset" also raises questions of whether Zynga's virtual goods, the bulk of its revenue, would also fall under this patent. Zynga offers browser-based games that work as application widgets on Facebook.

Proven that it is unafraid to litigate, Cupertino, California based Apple has demonstrated that it is willing to use its patents as ammunition in the mobile computing market. For instance, its patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung in Australia has expanded to include 278 patent claims. Based on its litigious history, we can only expect that Apple will start to use its portfolio of patents to attack competitors in its widening spheres of operations.

The recently awarded patent number 8,112,360 was originally filed in May 2006 and is known as Digital Media Acquisition Using Credit. A description of the functions of the patent include, a method for acquiring a media item from an online media store using a credit, said method including at least: (a) identifying a media item from being purchased by a purchaser, the media item having a purchase cost associated therewith; (b) determining whether the media item is permitted to be acquired using an item credit, the determining being based on at least the purchase cost and a country of origin for the purchaser, wherein said determining (b) includes at least: (b1) determining a media type for the media item; and (b2) determining whether the media type is permitted to be acquired using an item credit; (c) determining whether the purchaser has at least one item credit available at the online media store; and (d) thereafter applying the item credit associated with the purchaser so as to reduce or eliminate the purchase cost of the media item when said determining (b) determines that the media item is permitted to be acquired using an item credit.

As Facebook has witnessed from both Apple and Amazon, media sales could be an important vehicle in driving growth. Many media-centered companies, such as Zynga, are interested in having access to Facebook users, however Facebook demands that Zynga or anyone else interested in using its network to trade in virtual goods must use Facebook credits to complete the transaction. Since Facebook monitors the location of where its users are connecting from, that could put any media sales directly under the new Apple patent.

Apple clearly did not file the patent with the goal of shutting Facebook out of the digital media acquisition market. After all, the patent was filed while Facebook was still in the works in a Harvard dorm room. But with the social network's explosive growth over the past five years, this may indeed become Apple's intention.