Facebook on Tuesday filed a counter-suit against Yahoo over patent infringement, a latest move in the escalating patent war between the two tech giants.

"For the outset, we said we would defend ourselves vigorously against Yahoo's lawsuit, and today we filed our answer as well as counter-claims against Yahoo for infringing ten of Facebook's patents," Ted Ullyot, Facebook's general counsel, said in a statement.

"While we are asserting patent claims of our own, we do so in response to Yahoo's short-sighted decision to attack one of its partners and prioritize litigation over innovation," said Ullyot.

In its counter-suit filing, the social network giant said that Yahoo is infringing on a number of Facebook patents via Yahoo's services like homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service and advertisements displayed throughout the Yahoo site.

Yahoo filed patent suit against Facebook earlier last month. The wide-ranging patents cover everything from placing ads on web pages, customizing views for social users to privacy controls.

Yahoo's claim was called "puzzled actions" by Facebook which is at the eve of a multibillion-dollar initial public offering. And it was not taken as a wise move by industry watchers as Yahoo has long been using patents for defense rather than offense.

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