

Twitter Sued For Patent Infringement by TechRadium Messaging company. - olefoo
http://www.inquisitr.com/32198/twitter-sued-for-patent-infringement-and-it-doesnt-look-good/

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greatreorx
Their earliest patent was filed in 2005. Maybe I have a poor memory, but I
feel like anyone 'skilled in the art' of web/mobile technologies would have
anticipated applying and combining existing technologies in this way back in
2005.

There was a recent supreme court case - KSR v. Teleflex - that hopefully comes
into play... [http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/05/01/ksr-v-teleflex-the-
supre...](http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/05/01/ksr-v-teleflex-the-supreme-
courts-big-patent-ruling/) "Now, all knowledge in the relevant field —
technical knowledge, changes in implementing technologies, consumer demand —
will be available to show whether the invention was truly innovating or just
the product of connecting the dots in the prior art."

If their patent had been filed 10 years ago, I could maybe see an argument.
But 4 years ago, not so much.

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seasoup
Wow, one would have hoped that TechRadium would have tried to upsell their
clients on the security of their services over Twitter. This reminds me of the
company suing Google because they are offering maps for free. Twitter is a
start up and this will eat up some of their much needed capital... TechRadium
is trying to bully them into shutting down instead of trying to have a better
product. Another example of our patent system gone awry.

~~~
olefoo
I'm fairly sure that the owners and employees of TechRadium would disagree and
say that they are merely trying to protect their invention and defend the
business they've built on it.

This is not a case of a patent troll sitting on an idea and attempting to
charge a toll from anyone who uses it without themselves developing it. This
is a company that actually went out and built a business and spent a fair
amount of effort making sure that they could defend it. And now they are.

~~~
ramy_d
and yet don't you think the patents are still vague?

~~~
spc476
I'm not a patent attorney, but to me, they seem to be completely different
than what Twitter does:

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7130389/claims.html>
<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7362852/claims.html>
<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7418085/claims.html>

It seems their technology is more push, that is, one person submits a message
and their software will then broadcast it via email, SMS, phone, etc, and will
even translate the message to a target language. Twitter is pull; it doesn't
push. Other third parties might do the pushing, but Twitter, nope.

Also, the last two patents seem to be more business related, applying the
first patent to schools and government organizations, which to me, is a
painfully obvious use of the first patent (and in my world, the other two
would not have been issued, but we're not on my world).

~~~
halo
I agree, although I'm not a patent lawyer either.

The first claims of each of those patents states that there must be "user
selected priority information that indicates a contact order for the user
contact device" and that there should be "a priority order for contacting each
user contact device within the group". Twitter doesn't do that, and all the
other claims rely on the first.

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olefoo
A slightly more indepth article is
<http://www.macworld.com/article/142129/2009/08/twitter.html>

The technology they are attempting to protect is described here
<http://www.techradium.com/about/irisBrief.cfm>

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dtf
Twitter was apparently founded after Ev noticed the way people were using the
personalized away messages on their instant messengers (as status updates).
MSN Messenger has been doing this since 2001, and IRC has had /away for much
longer than that. Seems a similar kind of service, doesn't it?

~~~
zandorg
I thought it was the other guy who founded it?

Didn't Ev come in later on?

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socratees
The patent is available at Google Patents.
<http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=gUR7AAAAEBAJ> . I couldn't find
anything similar to twitter.

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danielrhodes
This is a classic case of a technology company patenting something that is a
very generalized concept, and that gives it grounds to be removed. If the
patent really is distinct enough, they should also sue anybody who makes money
off of email services as well.

There's also a patent for a video player inside a browser -- funny that nobody
has tried suing on that one yet.

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cookiecaper
With Twitter's (annoying/undeserved/silly) high profile, this may finally shed
some light on patent litigation in the main stream. A politician may even see
this as his opportunity to show the kids how cool he is and introduce patent
reform legislation. Let's hope so!

~~~
dpcan
This was my first thought as well. In a way, this is the best thing that can
possibly happen for software. It could be THE case that sheds public light on
the ridiculousness of software method patents. If only patents weren't such
big business for the government in the U.S.

~~~
monkeygrinder
Well put. Although European patent laws are a different kettle of fish.

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nick007
Twitter has already been around and popular for too long for someone to try
and sue now for the basic concept underlying their whole service. Twitter's
defense will be that this should have been brought up before -- before they've
put in a few years of effort and millions of dollars.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I'm afraid that's unaplicable. If it were, the whole concept of "submarine
patent" would not exist —at least not for famous things, like theora.

