April 23, 2012 – Facebook announced that the company will pay Microsoft $550 million to acquire 650 of the 925 patent assets that Microsoft recently acquired from AOL for $1 billion.  According to the press release, Facebook will obtain ownership of approximately 650 AOL patent assets as well as a license to the AOL patents and applications that Microsoft will continue own.  Microsoft acquired approximately 925 US patents and patent applications and a license to the remaining 300 AOL patents that were not subject to the sale. Microsoft issued a press release with a statement from Microsoft general counsel, Brad Smith stating, “Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction. As we said earlier this month, we had submitted the winning AOL bid in order to obtain a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio.”