The New Twitter Patent In A Nutshell

The wording of the Twitter patent pretty vague, which is normal for most patents, until you get to the ‘follow’ part. Basically, the Twitter patent explains a service that lets users follow each other, allows messages to be posted without specific recipients and allows these messages to be displayed to the followers.

But the Twitter patent falls under the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA). Last year, Adam Messinger, now CTO of Twitter, introduced the IPA. Under the IPA, companies seek out intellectual property management, which agrees not to use patents from employee inventions without the approval of all involved employees.

What This Means

Because of the ‘follow’ component, some companies may face charges of infringement. Companies like Status.net with its Identica service, App.net, Yammer (acquired by Microsoft last year), Google+ and even Facebook with their ‘follow’ feature. This means that ANY service that sends out messages without addressing specific recipients who follow a specific account could be liable. In short, the term ‘follow’ is not something you want to have in you system unless you happen to be Twitter. This could mean that such companies will begin to modify such language to ‘subscribe.’

For more on the new Twitter Patent:

Introducing the Innovator’s Patent Agreement 

Twitter Wins Patent For Twittering 

Twitter Granted Patent On Itself