If Facebook can’t innovate just buy the patents

We all know that right now Facebook is the big heavy in the social networking world. What it hasn’t created on its own, it has copied from its competitors. In keeping with that idea it turns out that Facebook has added to its vault of patents the old fashioned way – it bought them.

Owen Thomas over at VentureBeat just let us know that as of June 7 the following patents were transferred to Facebook from the social network originator, Friendster.

• System and method for managing an online social network
• Feeding updates to landing pages of users of an online social network from external sources
• System, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.

So it seems that if you can’t out innovate any potential competitors the fear of lawsuits is another way to keep them from getting to uppity I guess.