"Facebook's entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo's patented social networking technology," Yahoo wrote in the lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Yahoo accuses Facebook of infringing patents covering technologies related to advertising, privacy, site customization, social networking and integrated communications in social networking.

Reports began surfacing a couple of weeks ago that Yahoo had approached Facebook with a request that it license the patents.

(More to follow.)

The IDG News Service