
Patent for pull down to refresh mechanic.  - nirmal
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2010/0199180.html
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jcsalterego
Given his outward support of other developers' using the Pull Down to Refresh
mechanism, this is a defensive patent more than anything else.

<http://twitter.com/atebits/status/21665180962>

<http://twitter.com/atebits/status/21629390400>

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someone_here
Defensive patents can be turned offensive quite instantly. Look at what Oracle
is doing.

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jcsalterego
You mean how Oracle took Sun's defensive patents and unleashed all hell?

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irons
I suppose this is why Tweetie for OS X has been languishing for a year. Loren
had better things to do with his time.

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maukdaddy
Like getting bought?

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Construct
Filed 4/8/2010. I'm fairly confident that I used the pull-down refresh
mechanic in other apps well before that, so these guys had better have some
seriously good evidence that they were first to invent.

Then again, it's rather easy to be granted a patent. It's much harder to make
it hold up in court. Still frustrating when app developers have to be afraid
of implementing simple and obvious functionality like this for fear of being
sued!

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benatkin
It's not the filing date that matters. It's the date of the invention.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art#First-to-
invent_versu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art#First-to-
invent_versus_first-to-file)

The name on the patent is Loren Britcher, who wrote Tweetie. Did you implement
the feature before Tweetie came out?

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tkeller
It's both.

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benatkin
Thanks. I stand corrected.

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lanstein
Patent _application_

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armandososa
Does the patent now belong to Twitter?

