
Twitter granted patent on Twitter-like services - RobAley
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=8401009&OS=8401009&RS=8401009
======
Arjuna
I realize that we all have strong opinions about the topic of software
patents, but in an effort to radiate more light and less heat, I think it is
important to understand the official Twitter position on this topic as well.

Introducing the Innovator's Patent Agreement

Note: Emphasis is mine.

"We will implement the IPA later this year, and it will apply to all patents
issued to our engineers, _both past and present_." [1]

"The Innovators Patent Agreement (IPA) is a new way to do patent assignment
that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment
from a company to its employees that patents can only be used for defensive
purposes. The company will not use the patents in offensive litigation without
the permission of the inventors. This control flows with the patents, so if
the company sells the patents to others, the assignee can only use the patents
as the inventor intended." [2]

[1] [http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/04/introducing-
innovator...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/04/introducing-innovators-
patent-agreement.html)

[2] <https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent-agreement>

~~~
cacois
And how do they plan on enforcing that?

~~~
jeremyarussell
The same way lawyers already enforce contracts? If I had to guess. That and
having publicly made the statement, they would see a mass exodus of users if
they broke their own promise. (Think GoDaddy)

~~~
jacques_chester
Contracts require (amongst other things) counter-parties who also sign and the
exchange of goods or services between the parties ("consideration"), neither
of which unilaterally signing some random document has.

In law, it is very difficult for individuals to bind their future selves. You
generally need another party to create obligations that _they_ can enforce
against _you_. So for example counter-parties to a contract, trustees and
beneficiaries, employers and employees, fiduciary agents and their clients etc
etc. All of these require distinct legal persons to work, if you you combine
them into a single legal person the obligations evaporate.

Because when it's you vs you the law pretty sensibly throws its hands in the
air and says "well what the hell do you want the courts to do? Hop in a time
machine and drag past you into court?"

IANAL, TINLA.

------
mikecane
I haven't read the patent. But it seems to me that prior art would be
CompuServe's CB Simulator -- from the early 1980s. That's what I thought of
when I first encountered Twitter. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cb_simulator>

~~~
TallGuyShort
>> _TennesseeBunny_ was dialed in with a laptop and a 2400 baud modem and
broadcast the event play by play

And there we have the invention of live-tweeting an event!

------
Kliment
This is disgusting and immoral. It also seems to have been filed before they
made their patent promise thing public. Assholes.

~~~
amckenna
as noted above:

"We will implement the IPA later this year, and it will apply to all patents
issued to our engineers, both past and present." [1]

emphasis on _past_

[1] [http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/04/introducing-
innovator...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/04/introducing-innovators-
patent-agreement.html)

------
roc
The independent claims all explicitly codify the follower/following mechanic.
So if you want to show prior art, you'll have to find something where a user
was subscribing to receive broadcast messages from other explicitly-defined
_users_ , as opposed to subscribing to a channel, group, mailing list, etc.

The heaps of similar methods that don't include follower/following is a good
reminder of how easy it is to avoid infringing on this patent: just skip the
follower/following mechanic.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
afaik, LiveJournal (i.e., Brad Fitzpatrick) invented the follower/following
pattern, except they just called it "friends of" & "friends".

LJ was the direct inspiration for Twitter, at least according to this
interview:
[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-c...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-
creator.html)

~~~
roc
Friends is bi-directional, no?

Or did LiveJournal have a way for me to be your friend without you being mine?

~~~
chimeracoder
> Friends is bi-directional, no?

Not in Livejournal lingo - remember, this is pre-Facebook.

Livejournal's 'friend' and 'friend of' worked exactly the same as Twitter's
'following' and 'followers'.

~~~
roc
That would seem to be prior art for that element then, depending on the dates.
Though now we'd have to dig into the rest of the elements.

And apparently I'm getting downvoted for not being familiar with LiveJournal,
so that's something someone else would have to do.

------
jack_trades
Is this because someone forgot to patent the cc feature of email? We've been
doing similar point to multi-medium translation of messages for decades. Email
to email+text pager for doctors in hospitals. Surely there's a strong prior
art case that invalidates this, but this is also obvious enough that it really
shouldn't get through in the first place.

I am just too thick to understand IP law.

~~~
easytiger
Or BBS, or IRC status bloomberg terminals etc etc etc.

Whole thing sucks. I'm not going to read the patent.

------
smogzer
If the guy that invented sms patented 140 char messages there would be no
twitter. Or irc messages, or smoke signals, or X where one people sends a text
message to others. Patents are a bureocratic perversion that do not acomplish
any progress to humanity, they just perpetuate the bureocratic system itself.

~~~
rooshdi
Many of these humans are caught within a system which incentivizes personal
interests over those of society. Those in higher power are aware of this, but
too cowardly to do anything about it, sadly, and the lower amongst us are
forced to at least protect themselves from a broken system. But the thing is,
the more they protect themselves, the more this corrupt system becomes
reinforced and innovation becomes even more endangered. We need to wake up and
say enough is enough already. Do we really want this paralyzing system to
dictate us and future humanity?

~~~
rhizome
There is always a choice.

~~~
rooshdi
What good is a choice when they've got a gun to your head? Do most of us have
to die before we finally get it?

~~~
rhizome
A gun...over patents? I think you may be diluting the topic for some reason.

~~~
rooshdi
I'm not diluting nothing. Patents shoot down competition.

------
pbnjay
You have got to be kidding me. This just shows how broken the US patent system
is for software.

------
nessence
The patents involves routing messages with emphasis on followers. Everything
previous I'm aware of has been multicast based or address based, like email or
mailing lists. Most internet and application-layer protocols are destination
based. Where is a protocol that says "Route this message based on who is
interested in the source."? All I find is "send this message there, based on
X, or, send that message here, based on Y"; both destination based. Would be
interesting to know or hear of past protocols which are more similar to
twitter's patent.

~~~
dexen
_Everything previous I'm aware of has been multicast based or address based,
like email or mailing lists._

As others remarked, IRC is follower-based. You follow a bunch of channels by
sending subscription message ( _JOIN #channel-name_ ) to central authority
(IRC server). The server keeps track of who follows which channel, and brokers
any _PRIVMSG #channel message_ messages to the followers, until the person
does _PART #channel-name_ or disconnects. Aside of that, a direct person-to-
person mechanism exists just as well, also via the _PRIVMSG_ command.

The _USER nickname_ command provides, among other, list of (public) channels
the named person follows, which some IRC clients use to allow user to follow
the same channels.

Yes, there is a difference between an IRC channel and a singular persona, but
it is not as clear-cut as it may seem on its face. On one hand, some channels
are muted, and only admins, or just a single admin, can post. On the other,
Twitter handles often stand for multiple persons, speaking for one
organization, team etc.

* * *

As an IRC user, I am ashamed and appalled of how low our industry has fallen
-- somebody applies for a patent for what (after cursory read seems to me) a
copy of well-known and long-established functionality.

~~~
nessence
IRC has no such long-established functionality. You can MSG a #channel or a
user and that's it. User's can't follow each other and there are no lists.
These followers and lists are how twitter routes messages, not a channel.

Such a simple difference makes all the difference. In this case, enough to
file a patent.

If they didn't file a patent someone else would have.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _If they didn't file a patent someone else would have._

And Twitter would have been in a position to object it to death.

------
shocks
What does this mean for the likes of Identica, StatusNet, OStatus, etc?

~~~
EGreg
[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/twitter-
patent-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/twitter-patent-ipa/)

------
mikeocool
This is almost definitely a direct result of the recent legislation that
changed patents from a 'first to invent' to 'first to file' system. Basically,
Twitter had to file a patent on twitter-like services, or someone else could
come along, patent it, and force Twitter to 'license' the tech.

The law went into effect on Monday.

~~~
xfghpu
It has nothing to do with the recent legislation. The patent was filed in
2008, so is under the old "first to invent" regime.

------
polskibus
Ridiculous, surely sth like Jabber could be shown as prior art ?

------
scrapcode
Does this mean I have to take down all of my Ruby on Tails Twitter-like
tutorial apps?

~~~
anoncow
If you don't care about your websites(eg. Hobby projects, projects that aren't
doing well) or care a lot(eg. Your site is the next facebook) approach a
Patent lawyer and have your site reviewed. If he/she finds something amiss,
approach twitter and ask them if they are ok with your website. If your site
infringes the patent and you don't care about your site and you do this, you
end up helping people understand where twitter stands on the issue of patent
abuse and trolling. If you care a lot about your website and you do this, you
are safeguarding your interests.

However, if you care just enough for your website(eg. Your site makes enough
money to pay for itself and then some), I would advice against approaching
twitter. Chances are twitters lawyers will ask you to shut your project, if
you approach. And if you don't, chances are your project might be small enough
and remain unharmed(security by obscurity?) if twitter goes a-trolling.

------
JohnLBevan
How did Twitter get the patent on BizTalk? The description sounds much more
like BizTalk than Twitter to me.

------
jacques_chester
I'm the in the middle of patenting an actual protocol (unrelated). In case
you're wondering, yes: patentese is always vague and difficult to follow. I
wrote a few thousand words to describe my protocol to the level you'd find in
an RFC, and it blows out to tens of thousands of words of dense verbiage and a
bunch of diagrams with hundreds of reference numbers.

------
just2n
There is prior art for this. I've seen forums that permit turning on notices
for all posts by specific users, which in itself looks to satisfy every claim,
since they also include a "what's new" feed which is basically just a dumping
of posts anywhere on the site into 1 place. They behave like a miniature
twitter in that regard.

IRC clients also notify the user when messages targeting them (via your
handle, similar to @handle) are received, and I've seen scripts that pull
comments from specific users from any open channels, and the opposite (namely
blocking users) has been present in countless applications, which indicates
the concept of paying special attention to a specific user isn't a new one.

On top of this, I don't feel like there's anything that's innovative at all in
this patent. Since when did the innovation step stop being a requirement?

------
pokoleo
I read through the first claim, here's a summary I built as I went along
(IANAL so I'm probably wrong).

Their first claim is the following:

A way to communicate between computers (1:many) where users can designate by
computer to follow someone else.

Where users are identified by accounts where following is an account config.

Where users can be notified of messages that they are not explicitly told
about (but follow).

Where another user is marked as the sender (we have their followers, so that
is implicitly marked too).

Where the first user is one of the followers.

Where the first user has devices ("endpoints") that they'd like to recieve
messages from (phone/etc), this patent applies to sending each message to each
of the endpoints in their appropriate format.

Points 2-8 are about:

\- Different ways to send the message.

\- per-following subscription preferences.

\- Message preferences set up in weird ways. (3. I'm not too sure on this)

\- Broadcasting through an aggregator that sends data through batched
messages.

\- Translating messages from/to UTF-8/etc.

\- Delivering messages at specific times.

\- Sending URLs to messages

At a glance, claim 9 is about storing the data for a message.

Claims 10-15 are about:

\- Different ways to trigger the message that this data can represent.

\- Per-following subscription preferences (I'm starting to think this is
Twitter group subscriptions)

\- Per-following subscription preferences including time periods.

\- Messages that have no explicit recipient.

\- Aggregated message delivery.

\- Sending URLs to messages as the message

At a glance, claim 16 is about building the system that does this.

Claims 17-22 are pretty much the same as 10-15

EDIT: Wow, I didn't realize HN uses a variant of Markdown. (Good, good)

------
philip_dorrell
Relevant prior art, publicly disclosed on or before February 2001, which quite
explicitly includes the "follower/following" mechanic:

(The blog article was written in relation to a different patent, but the prior
art is most directly related to a Twitter-like service.)

[http://thinkinghard.com/blog/PossiblePriorArtForKootolPatent...](http://thinkinghard.com/blog/PossiblePriorArtForKootolPatentDated2001.html)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20010223204516/miski.sourceforge....](http://web.archive.org/web/20010223204516/miski.sourceforge.net/miski-
white-paper.html)

------
EGreg
Well at least they have this:
[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/twitter-
patent-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/twitter-patent-ipa/)

~~~
jrajav
At least they have... what? A shill-ish, apologetic article on Wired that
doesn't offer anything except "we _pinky_ promise not to troll"? There is
still absolutely nothing stopping them from using this however they please.

~~~
EGreg
If one of their employees invented it, then they can stop the legal
proceedings.

Still, this patent can probably easily be invalidated with prior art.

------
Prefinem
And people wonder why innovation is being stifled. If you create something
great that works, another bigger company already has a patent on it.

------
methehack
Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

They are using other people's money -- given the current system, they had a
fiduciary responsibility to do this, unfortunately.

Maybe the lesson is to not take other people's money, but investment really
does allow grand things happen that would not happen otherwise.

Patent system is fucked and fucked corrupts absolutely. At least, that's my
take away.

------
pornel
It doesn't have an issue date, so I presume it's not granted and it's too
early to lament how broken USPTO is.

The claims require service to have concept of explicit following of other
users and receiving messages not explicitly addressed to them, so it's not
like CC: in e-mail or Jabber chats.

~~~
RobAley
Other press are stating the patent was issued yesterday, if this is correct
perhaps the uspto website isn't updated daily.

------
EugeneOZ
Another one "non-evil" empire...

------
artursapek
Who's to say this isn't just for meant defense? I imagine Twitter is a huge
target for trolls given their deep pockets. Calm down, everyone.

------
danmaz74
So, this has been granted? Claim 1 looks incredibly broad to me.

------
DanBC
There are 22 claims.

Would something have to meet all 22 claims to be infringing?

~~~
scromar
No, just all the elements of any one of the claims.

------
lucidquiet
I will now patent web pages.... follow by making a bookmark.

------
fakeer
American companies had patented many famous varieties of rice[1] and other
corp. Not to mention many medicinal plants that is being used in India not for
centuries but millennia. USPO granted them all that. Luckily Indian Govt
showed some ball at that time(which is remarkably rare), and they directly
told the patent holders to stuff it up their a __e.

Matter was settled.

Can't sth like that happen in computers and Internet?

(BTW, it seems either USPO is very corrupt or very negligent. Or maybe they
don't give a damn!).

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmati#Patent_battle>

~~~
pyre
I doubt very much that the USPTO is getting kickbacks to pass patents through.
As I understand it, "number of patents granted" is the metric they use for
success, which puts a lot of pressure on the patent examiners at the bottom
rung to do very basic research before pushing things through.

Basically, there is no incentive for them to do a diligent job, so they don't.

------
uribs
Invalid, trivial prior art everywhere.

IPv4 multicast with IGMP and any system built on it are the most obvious, not
to mention any IM software where people can set their status and have it
broadcasted to all contacts.

