
Twitter Introduces Innovators Patent Agreement - shill
https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent-agreement
======
zdw
I wonder if Twitter will retroactively apply this to the "pull to refresh"
patent they acquired when they purchased the Tweetie and turned it into the
official Twitter client:

[http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&p=1&S1=20100199180.PGNR.&OS=dn/20100199180&RS=DN/20100199180)

~~~
ceejayoz
Tweetie's developer is indicating this applies to pull-to-refresh:
<https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/192298232968249344>

------
robterrell
Can't believe someone at Twitter wrote this. It's riddled with semicolons.

 _(ducks)_

~~~
srl
I don't usually upvote jokes on HN, but when I do, I provide some actual
content in the same post.

OT (obviously): This is an example of a facet of humor I find rather difficult
to explain. Most comedians pull this trick once or twice per show - the good
ones, more often. You take the current topic of conversation, and link it (in
a somewhat skewed way) with some previous joke. Somehow, this has an
amplifying effect on the old joke, which continues to get stronger as you do
it a few more times (to the same target). Anybody know of an explanation /
name for this?

(Did ... did I kill it?)

~~~
btucker
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callback_(comedy)>

~~~
pfraze
Fitting for a javascript joke to be a callback.

------
ForrestN
It's a very interesting move. I guess the calculation (apart from real
benevolence, which I don't mean to undercut) would be that the good will and
good press, affection from idealistic engineers and the resulting hiring and
retention advantage, and the effect on the rest of the patent landscape (over
which they have no direct control) is worth more than the patents themselves.

The thing is, how that plays out depends on whether or not other companies
agree to change their behavior. If it's true, as another comment says, that
they will allow Apple to use the pull-to-refresh patent, for example, that's
some clear leverage lost. If no one else makes similar moves, won't Twitter be
at a disadvantage in the context of the "patent wars?" Will the other
advantages I listed above still be worth it if the patent landscape doesn't
change? Does this effect the value (especially as a potential acquisition
target) of Twitter? I don't know enough about their portfolio of patents to
know how valuable there patents might be.

In any case, it's at least something new-feeling in the story of software
patents. Hopefully it will have some positive effects.

EDIT: Also, hearing all this talk of "defensive" patent use makes me think
about Intellectual Ventures; does that sort of thing count as defensive under
this plan?

~~~
harryh
You're too cynical. I think they did it because it's the right thing to do.

~~~
ForrestN
I said specifically I'm not intending to undercut their motives. Even if
that's true, I think it's worth understanding how it impacts then
strategically.

~~~
harryh
You're right. I misread your comment. My bad.

------
paul
This is awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing which tech companies sign on.

------
ntkachov
'The company will not use the patents in offensive litigation without the
permission of the inventors.'

Honestly how hard is it to go up to someone and say "Let us troll with this
patent and we will cut you in on 20% of the profit". I know quite a few people
who would do that deal just to pay for their kids college in the future. I
don't see this changing anything except for inventors now getting a cut of the
deal.

~~~
harryh
That would violate the terms of the agreement:

"If Assignee needs to assert any of the Patent claims against any entity for
other than a Defensive Purpose, Assignees must obtain prior written permission
from all of the Inventors without additional consideration or threat."

At which point whoever twitter was suing could claim that they had violated
their own agreement so they don't have grounds to sue.

~~~
extension
As long as the inventor holds the patent, what stops them from making a new
agreement with the assignee that allows non-defensive litigation?

~~~
WiseWeasel
The company still holds the patent, and can even sell it, but the inventor
maintains veto control over its offensive use.

~~~
raldi
The top post in this very thread demonstrates how that protection can be
easily bypassed.

~~~
WiseWeasel
No, it explains how the purchaser of the patent can get the inventor to go
along with their offensive patent lawsuit, which is necessary BECAUSE the
inventor maintains veto power. If that weren't the case, the inventor would
have no say in the matter.

~~~
extension
But what's the point of the "no consideration" bit? What's the point of two
parties agreeing that they won't make a new deal later, when they can anyway?

~~~
WiseWeasel
They just have to say if pressed that there was no threat or other
consideration, and that they agreed to let the other party use their patent
offensively. Then collect their totally unrelated consulting fee.

------
tibbon
Why would a startup _not_ do this (aside from wanting to be a greedy patent
troll?)?

No seriously, if I have a startup that cares about my employees, is there any
real reason to not do this?

~~~
Jasber
It might hurt your chances of being acquired if the acquiring company doesn't
want the restrictions on the patents (greedy patent troll or not).

I could see investors having a problem with this.

~~~
dlitz
Employers and investors who have a problem with this are going to have to
weigh the cost of these restrictions against the cost of turning away high-
value engineers who can afford to be selective about where they work.

During the hiring process, lots of employers are already giving candidates
verbal assurances that their patents will only be enforced defensively. Now,
software engineers have a practical way to demand that they make these
assurances binding. Employers who fail to do so will have a much tougher time
explaining themselves.

I'm probably going to start requiring this of any employers that I work for in
the future.

------
mooneater
I like the idea. From the agreement, clause 2:

'An assertion of claims of the Patents shall be considered for a “Defensive
Purpose” if the claims are asserted .... (c) otherwise to deter a patent
litigation threat against Assignee or Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers,
suppliers, or distributors.'

That part (c) is pretty vague.

~~~
amirmc
and means that the phrase "offence is the best form of defence" is still
applicable.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I think that's a big stretch.

I agree that the language is pretty broad (particularly the idea that ayou can
use it against someone who has bought action against anyone, not just to
defend yourself) but I don't think you could get away with getting your
retaliation in early the way it's written.

------
jharding
Glad to see Twitter doing this, it's definitely a step in the right direction.
In my opinion what this really needs is the support from another well-known
company. If a company like Facebook announced next week that they were
adopting the Innovators Patent Agreement, I think that could get the ball
rolling and we would start to see many other companies join the cause.

------
zxypoo
It's also on Github for comment: <https://github.com/twitter/innovators-
patent-agreement>

------
hornokplease
Here's the original post submission on the Twitter Engineering blog:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853654>

------
robomartin
Didn't read the fine print...

Does this mean that you will be able to use any Twitter-patented technology at
will and not expect to be sued for it?

~~~
ascendant
No, I think it means that the patents will never end up in the hands of people
that just plan to use them as weapons to extort other companies vs. their
actual useful purpose, which is to protect innovators from having their hard
work ripped off.

~~~
nilsbunger
Are you saying you _couldn't_ use any Twitter patents for any purpose
yourself? I don't understand what would prevent you from doing so...

~~~
_delirium
Twitter can still use the patents offensively if the engineer whose name is on
the patent agrees. They're just committing not to do so _against_ the will of
the inventor.

------
vibrunazo
> If Assignee needs to assert any of the Patent claims against any entity for
> other than a Defensive Purpose, Assignees must obtain prior written
> permission from all of the Inventors without additional consideration or
> threat.

Doesn't this nullify everything else? I would love to believe we live in a
world where inventors would stop their patents being used wrongly if they had
the power. But I honestly believe these are a very tiny minority. Won't most
inventors just agree with the company they work for anyway? There doesn't need
to be any explicit threat, but just working for a company probably means that
you'll do what's necessary to keep your bosses happy. Won't companies just get
a signed consensus from inventors and keep suing anyway?

Am I missing something obvious?

~~~
jleader
In my experience, the inventors often are working somewhere else by time a
patent gets litigated. In particular, patent trolls usually acquire patents
without also acquiring the labs, inventors, etc. that created them.

------
jasonkolb
So what is the difference between this agreement and simply publishing the
guts of a patent in a public way that establishes a commercial use date?

~~~
Drbble
Twitters version allows defense against trolls like Apple.

------
tucif
So, what if you are the inventor of a patent on company A, then you get hired
or create company B, which uses your patented inventions on company A?

You won't give them permission to sue you..

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
They wouldn't be violating under the terms of this agreement - they're granted
a perpetual license.

But unless I'm misunderstanding you I believe you're missing the point. This
is pretty much written with the assumption that engineers wouldn't grant
permission to a first strike action whoever it were against and that that's
fine.

It's turning patents into tools weapons that can only be used for retaliation.

------
monochromatic
> 2(b) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, or voluntarily
> participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against another in the past
> ten years, so long as the Entity has not instituted the patent infringement
> lawsuit defensively in response to a patent litigation threat against the
> Entity

So it counts as a defensive purpose if they're suing _anyone_ who's filed a
patent infringement case in the last decade? That's pretty friggin' broad.

~~~
galenward
That's hugely broad. Basically they won't sue startups unless the startups sue
them first.

I love this approach, but it should also be pointed out that this is a very
easy approach for a patent-poor company to take. If you don't have many
patents, you aren't going to sue other companies who do have patents and you'd
sure like to look like the good guy if you infringe on their patents.

~~~
kfury
Actually, it appears to mean that they won't sue startups unless the startups
sued _someone_ about a patent in the last 10 years, unless that suit also
qualified as a Defensive suit, which means that the suit is against _another_
company that hasn't sued anyone about a patent in the last 10 years, unless
_that_ suit was a Defensive action.

Turtles all the way down.

~~~
monochromatic
Indeed. I wonder if a nonlawyer wrote this contract, because it has some
issues.

------
mythz
Twitter is quickly becoming OSS's best role model - imitators take note.

~~~
streptomycin
This is sarcasm, right? Twitter is a walled garden.

~~~
mythz
People got to get off their utopia world-view thinking companies should be
giving away their core-business' secret sauce - the essence that keeps them in
business.

There is a clear distinction between core-business-specific platform and the
technology their platform is built on which facilitates it (i.e. OSS
projects/libraries).

Twitter is built on open-source, they enhance & contribute to existing OSS
projects & open source key technologies their platform is built on:

<http://twitter.github.com/> / <https://dev.twitter.com/opensource/thanks> /
<https://github.com/twitter>

~~~
streptomycin
I know. All that is nice, certainly better than many companies. But that
doesn't make them role models. I'd like to think we can shoot a little higher
in finding role models than companies that utterly lock down their platform
but throw us a few scraps for free.

~~~
mythz
They are perfect Role models since their a successful company who employee
great talent who use and contribute back to open source. If something doesn't
exist they'll build it and open source key parts of their technology platform
and are more than open about what they use and how they're able to scale their
incredible load:

<http://blog.twitter.com> /
[http://highscalability.com/display/Search?searchQuery=twitte...](http://highscalability.com/display/Search?searchQuery=twitter&moduleId=4876569)

Giving away your core-business is corporate suicide, they would be a shadow of
themselves if 100 clones surfaced overnight offering the exact same service -
and by extension be unable to contribute back to OSS as much as they have.

~~~
streptomycin
Your other reply is "dead" for some reason, so I'll reply to it here.

You can build services that interoperate with Gmail over the same protocol. I
can run my own email server, even (can you run your own Twitter server?). That
interoperability is how Gmail came to exist, disrupting the entrenched hosted
email industry and providing a massively better service to its users. If
Hotmail had 99% market share and only allowed email to be sent to other
Hotmail addresses, then Gmail never would have happened. Yet Gmail survives by
providing a great service.

Now compare with Twitter. An open equivalent standard is StatusNet, which
powers Identica and other services. But none of them can work with Twitter,
because Twitter is a walled garden with 99% of the users. Thus, if Twitter
starts to provide a crappy service, it will be much harder for competitors to
instigate a Gmail-like disruption because they won't be able to interoperate
with existing Twitter users.

~~~
Drbble
Twitter has an API, so you can syndicate your Foo feed through your Twitter
account, and download your incoming Tweets to publish elsewhere. How is that
different from SMTP, from the accessibility angle?

~~~
streptomycin
Huge, huge, huge difference. Example:

Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and my own personal mail server can all interoperate with
Gmail as first class citizens. I can easily send an email from Gmail to
someone using Hotmail. That's how Gmail was able to easily get a foothold in
the market, because Gmail users could email users of other email providers.

Identica, other StatusNet installations, and other services cannot fully
interoperate with Twitter as first class citizens. How do I send a Tweet from
Twitter to someone using Identica, for instance?

~~~
mythz
You've missed the huge difference:

Gmail isn't open source - Open APIs/Open Data is not Open Source. People use
the Gmail service they allow external integration to broaden Gmails
reach/ecosystem - this makes the Gmail service more attractive.

The fact is they'll never Open source the Gmail client which is their secret-
sauce/USP that others are looking to replicate. Like twitters application
platform, that is not something anyone should ever expect to be given away -
its bad business.

~~~
streptomycin
Twitter isn't open source either. In that way they are similar to Gmail.
Twitter is also headquartered in the US, same as Google. There are innumerable
other ways that they are similar.

There are also some major differences, such as the one I described about
interoperability. Another difference: unlike Gmail, Twitter's "secret sauce"
isn't their website. It's their walled garden social network. Twitter could
open source their whole website's code, and it wouldn't much help anyone build
a Twitter competitor. StatusNet is already pretty nice.

Also, since we're veering way off topic here, note that I am not arguing that
Google is "OSS's best role model", like you said about Twitter. I'm just using
Gmail as an example to illustrate how Twitter's walled garden is different
than how email works.

------
linuxhansl
This is good. Personally I would rather in a world where every so called
"invention" is immediately documented publicly so that from that point on
there is prior art and nobody can claim a patent on it.

Tipping the balance of offensive to defensive patents will definitely also
help.

------
mochazebedee
This move strikes me as a truce agreement proposed by someone with no sword.
How many technology patents does Twitter even HAVE, not counting Loren
Brichter's "pull-to-refresh" UI innovation?

------
WiseWeasel
Could a public company's leadership even adopt such a measure without getting
successfully sued by its shareholders? They would be putting liabilities on
the company's IP assets, decreasing their market value, which is not in the
interest of shareholders.

Would it just fly under the radar? I guess the company would have to argue
that this allows them to pursue and retain better talent, which might be an
easy case...

------
IvanDragoev
To protect your idea/product using patents is OK but using them to stop
innovations is a dark side. How to define the balance between using patents as
weapons and using them to secure investments is the big question. If your
innovative project uses something well-known, but adds the essence on top of
that, do you have to pay a license for all the bricks you use?

------
dutchbrit
Might be a step in the right direction, but when can we just ditch all
software patents?! (I know - bit of an unrelated comment)

------
TomGullen
The best form of defence is attack, is the language really air tight enough
for companies to not use them in attack?

------
ubervero
This thing should be on Docracy

~~~
vog
Wow, I didn't know of Docracy [1] yet. It looks interesting, but doesn't seem
to provide version control outside the web interface. From that perspective,
GitHub might be a better place for this.

[1] <http://www.docracy.com/>

------
Spoom
A nice idea, but many developers' employment contracts already state that they
assign all inventions created during the course of their duties to the
company, free and clear. How would this help such a situation?

~~~
harryh
Change the employment contracts to reference the restricted IPA instead of the
free and clear one.

------
orblivion
So so I'm clear on this, when they say patents can only be used for defensive
purposes, are they saying this will effectively nullify patent law in regard
to this particular patent?

------
ry
Will Google follow suit?

------
Fando
cool. a step in the right direction

------
oughton
Mmmmmm IPA

------
myspoonnotyours
This is pretty poorly drafted.

------
kwamenum86
No company in their right mind should sign this. This throws the baby out with
the bathwater. There are actually legitimate uses for patents and if you're
working on something non-trivial your company might want to (and might even be
obligated to in order to do right by shareholders) use the patent offensively.

~~~
a-priori
They still can use it offensively. They just have to get the inventor's
permission first.

~~~
kwamenum86
Thanks for the clarification

