Maybe that would be too overt. Maybe they needed to get a way to get a license with SRI that didn't look like a me too act and also nullify existing licenses.

If SRI actually had equity in Summly, then this is a way to pay off SRI, grab the license for Summly and potentially get SRI to make a change to its licensing agreement with other companies in Yahoo's best interest.

However, I thought that Apple wholly owned SRI, which would make my speculation BS...