Not that I’m a big proponent of umbrella patents for interaction design, but we got word that Facebook received a formal patent for the “newsfeed.”

Here’s what the patent covers:

Facebook's News Feed Patent

Ning, Twitter, Yammer, and anything else that creates a syndication of social news outside the protection of, and especially in direct competition with Facebook will be on the legal ropes for a while.

Good thing we’re building our Admitted and Enrolled Student Social Network for Higher Education on Facebook Platform.  We’ll get to focus on our product success while others might have to hire more lawyers :)

In reality, companies make patents like these to build up war-chests and use them as a mutual deterrent.  However, there’s rumors that Facebook might be more agressive in getting potential competitors to pay royalty fees or even forcibly make strategic investments in the Facebook Ecosystem.