Bangalore: Yahoo, the display ad giant, seems to be pretty upset after giving up its top spot to Facebook, which started out as a harmless social network. But Yahoo has seemingly awoken with Kodak’s attempt to stay afloat by filing patent lawsuits, and it looks like it learned a thing or two from the incident. It has chosen to file intellectual property cases against Facebook.

If this lawsuit involving Facebook and Yahoo does take its course to court, a report from Reuters said it would be the first to hit the realm of social media, proving how anti-social the firms really can be.

Things haven’t been easy on Yahoo as it had a particularly unsettling year in 2011. An aspect that continued changing through 2012 was management, with Scott Thompson becoming Yahoo’s new CEO, Jerry Yang resigning, and three other board members (including Roy Bostock) stepping down.

But in a move that could define Scott Thompson and his new growth strategies for Yahoo, the company’s legal head Mike Callahan called Ted Ullyot (Facebook’s general counsel) and told him they intended to take the social network to court for a number of patents.

In an emailed statement, Yahoo explained “Yahoo has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to protect its intellectual property. We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights.”

Wondering how Facebook reacted to Yahoo's statement?