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26 March 2013Patents

Twitter founders patent site's core service

Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Christopher Stone have been granted a US patent covering the site’s core service.

Dorsey and Stone filed an application for a “device-independent multipoint communication” platform in 2008. Their patent was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office last week.

The broadly-worded claim covers a system “configured to receive a message addressed to one or more destination users, the message type being, for example, short message service, instant messaging, e-mail, web form input, or application program interface function call”.

It protects Twitter's core service - in particular, the ability to "follow" other users and send and receive messages that are broadcast, rather than sent to a specific recipient, using a range of mediums.

“The system is also configured to determine information about the destination users, the information comprising preferred devices and interfaces for receiving messages,” states Dorsey and Stone’s application.

The patent could potentially enable Twitter to litigate against other social media sites that offer similar services.

But Twitter has promised it will only engage in defensive litigation: in April 2012, the company published an innovator’s patent agreement which it claims will keep control of Twitter’s patents “in the hands of engineers and designers”.

“It is a commitment from Twitter to our employers that patents can only be used for defensive purposes … We will not use patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission,” said Adam Messinger, Twitter’s vice president of engineering, in a blog post announcing the agreement.

Siddhartha Venkatesan, partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in Silicon Valley, said the patent appears to be the first issued to Twitter in the US. “It looks like Twitter has other patent applications pending, so this probably not be the last patent on the matter,” he said.

Whether other social media sites should be concerned depends on Twitter’s appetite for patent litigation, the nature of accused services and the availability of prior art, he added.

“That being said, I would suspect that at present Twitter is focused on continuing its remarkable growth and dealing with the current privacy, patent and other litigation matters on its docket.”

“Twitter has had a remarkable run in generating attention and revenues ... if it were to sue another technology company, it would be risking the validity of the patent as well as potentially placing its revenues at stake as a result of a potential counterclaim. It would not surprise me if this is a defensive play,” he said.

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