Here come the 'Twitter, we did it first' lawsuits
One of the issues when you create something simple, easy to use, and phenomenally popular is that there will invariably be some folks who come along and say that it was their idea first.
Naturally, that's started to happen to Twitter. Earlier this month, a patent lawsuit was filed against Twitter on behalf of a Texas-based company called TechRadium, which has a patent to "allow a group administrator or 'message author' to originate a single message that will be delivered simultaneously via multiple communication gateways to members of a group of 'message subscribers' over e-mail, text message, or another platform.
More specifically, TechRadium's technology has been applied to a product called Iris, which is designed to be able to send out mass messages for emergency response purposes. The lawsuit claims that Twitter's service amounts to "offering for sale or use, or selling or using these products without license or authority from TechRadium."
TechRadium claims it has "suffered actual and consequential damages," the suit reads, but isn't very specific beyond that. "Plaintiff does not yet know the full extent of such infringement and such extent cannot be ascertained except by discovery and special accounting." As for damages, the company seeks "an amount not less than the maximum amount permitted by law."
I'm not really sure what TechRadium's aim is here, because, as Wired put it, similarities between the two companies seem like "a ridiculously obvious use of modern technology." Remember when "microblogging" wasn't just Twitter, but also Jaiku (sold to Google and effectively shelved), Pownce (sold to Six Apart and shut down), and Plurk (still around, but we haven't heard a peep out of it recently)? There have also been, in the mass-messaging space, Yahoo's , Google's ill-fated Dodgeball, and Microsoft's still-experimental Vine--which also has an emergency-management angle.
And beyond that, the concept of short, pithy messages is nothing new. (Telegraphs? The short-form diaries of John Quincy Adams? Those funny banners with short messages on them that you sometimes see flying behind propeller planes at the beach?) My guess is that TechRadium is hoping the language in its patent is vague enough so that, at the least, it can get some recognition or (less likely) compensation.
So it's no shock that Twitter is going to get slapped with repeated accusations of "hey, we got there first." The same thing happened to Facebook, a far more complicated and less open-ended service, when the founders of ConnectU, a failed social network that had originated around the same time at Harvard University, claimed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had pilfered their business plan in creating his now-billion-dollar company.
And, as Wired points out, Twitter is well aware of this: leaked internal documents say that "We will be sued for patent infringement, repeatedly and often." Earlier this summer, the company hired its first general counsel right out of Google's legal ranks.
As for TechRadium, unless they can basically prove that Twitter's founders snuck into their offices and went hogwild with a photocopier and some stolen documents, this is one case that probably won't get off the ground.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Just look at our former president *cut scene of a drooling idiot who still cant from a complete coherent sentence without being prompted.*
I emphasize moral standard though. Just look at what 95 to 99 percent of cops do there. Highway robbery and false imprisonment.
And no this is not a personal attack. There were stories on the cops there all over CNN.
The comment over the former president you can take however you want.
The patent process when originally conceived was only intended to cover things that were so unique and worthwhile to mankind that it was unlikely that anyone else could ever come up with the idea. Now something completely vague like the idea of batch messaging (which was developed for newspapers in the 1870's) is owned by a company that didn't even exist when the first batch messages were sent from San Francisco to Chicago and New York. Even if we limit this to talking about computers then the patent had to have existed in the 1960's when SPAN and ARPNET were constructed and the commands were programmed into the operating system for the server and client systems on the networks.
Maybe the problem is that the people who issue patents don't actually understand what they are issuing patents for thus they allow patents with completely vague language that will include the pre-existing patents that have since move into the public domain.
You can read the Senate version here:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:s515is.txt.pdf
This new obviousness standard will be applied to patents granted prior to the SCOTUS decision, but the PTO is not going back and re-examining patents that were granted over the past 15 years. But if you assert one, you can be assured that you'll see a KSR obviousness defense come back at you.
There are other big decisions on patents as well, Checkout Medimmune and Sandisk from the year before. There's also another one coming this year (the name escapes me)
The big issue is apportionment, which tries to get to how valuable things are. One side wants value to be determined by how much that invention adds to the end product (i.e. the memory chip in question in my $300 cell phone cost $1.00, so at most I should pay a royalty on 1/300th of the sale price). The other side knows full well that very small changes in the chemical composition of a drug from one formula to another can create millions of dollars in value for that drug and possibly render the old one obsolete. They're not huge advocates of apportionment.
Some things are still intellectual property and need to be protected. However, when you start patenting ideas, it will stifle innovation. If someone has an idea that they can patent, but can't successfully market, then it basically sits there and does nothing. On the other hand, if something is successful, people will want to copy it and try to mirror the success and so there should be some protection. I don't know what the answer is, but there should be some kind of reform in the current system. It was set up for something that is centuries old and no longer applies to most areas.
Wonder how bad it will get until finally we have lawsuit on the patent system, that should be really interesting.
Well do something about it:
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/
If that's the case (vague claims), they will get nothing as the claims will be invalidated. I wouldn't get too worked up right now. Just sit back and watch what happens.
- by cnetpeter2 August 20, 2009 2:04 AM PDT
- ^^ agree - why do people search for a quick buck these days (years)?
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