Facebook has announced that it will purchase hundreds of patents for $550 million from Microsoft. The 650 patents were recently purchased from AOL, a deal which also granted license to another 275 patents, for over $1 billion.

This deal is key for Facebook, which is being sued by Yahoo! for violating 10 of their patents, including several that cover online advertising technology. Facebook is also prepping an IPO that is anticipated could be worth around $100 billion.

Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007 and the two companies have been close collaborations ever since. Facebook features search results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine as well as video chat technology provided by Microsoft’s Skype service.

Source: Reuters.com