Twitter Gets Sued For Letting Famous People Interact Online

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/twitter-lawsuit-vs-technologies/

by bjonathan • 16 years ago

151 53 16 years ago

ZeroMinx• 16 years ago

How many of these examples do we need to see before something is done with the US patent system?

chapel• 16 years ago

Probably not until the Government gets served papers for something they are doing that infringes on a random patent some troll is holding.

At this point most companies consider it cost of doing business; changing it could possibly weaken or remove the leverage they have with their patent warchest.

true_religion• 16 years ago

Even if that occurs, the US government can make use of a patent without paying fees under something akin to eminent domain laws.

cosgroveb• 16 years ago

You mean Senator. The Government has sovereign immunity, but if a ridiculous patent were to seriously threaten the family business of a sitting Senator we might see something get done.

Owesome• 16 years ago

just one more and then they'll do something about it

brlewis• 16 years ago

What we need is a compilation of examples where a software patent hindered or threatened to hinder innovation.

hessenwolf• 16 years ago

Can we put in Amazon's one-click wonder? Why should we have to make our buy process slower just to avoid a spurious patent?

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

What incentive is there for someone in the U.S. government to change the patent system?

alexqgb• 16 years ago

Currently, none.

As expensive as the patent system may be, the largest companies who deal with it are still in a position to treat it like a basic cost of doing business; one that happens to be so high that it can protect them from the truly disruptive innovations that are unlikely to come from their peers in the field.

As long as elections are privately financed cartels that depend on trolls to scare off potentially competitive startups, the patent system is going to stay broken. If and when we manage to reduce lobbyists to mere lobbyists, and not lobbyist/financiers, then sanity may prevail.

jrockway• 16 years ago

What incentive is there for someone on the Supreme Court not to interpret the Constitution as saying, "Supreme Court Justices can randomly take everyone's money for no reason"?

Integrity.

I know we talk about the 24 hour spin cycle and how all politicians are just mouthpieces for the MPAA, but some of them probably take a few minutes out of their term to think about how to make the world a better place. A few of them even try to do so.

hrabago• 16 years ago

I was hoping the BlackBerry patent issues from a few years ago would prompt our lawmakers to finally fix the problems, but even then they ignored it.

alexandros• 16 years ago

The interesting thing here is that Twitter hasn't even infringed by design. The celebrity culture is more a matter of who happened to find the service useful. If you can be sued for something you didn't even implement but is an artefact of how your platform is utilised by users, well, there's a problem.

What's next, suing Apple because consumers can stick an iPad to their fridge therefore infringing on 'System and method for affixing a touchscreen to a refrigeration device'?

corin_• 16 years ago

While they may not have designed the system specifically for it, they've certainly done their best to capitalise on it, including (for example) advertisments such as the one in TC's image, which I imagine is what the patent troll will use to justify the claim.

fakelvis• 16 years ago

The patent in question: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=e-ULAAAAEBAJ

A cursory browse will show that this is as expected: a wide-ranging patent that shouldn't have been granted in its submitted state.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

Reading the actual patent (http://www.google.com/patents?id=e-ULAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... ), seems dubious (well, it's dubious full stop..)

My brief reading of it seems to me that the patent is quite specific about categorising celebs into their "fields", it also talks about biographical details as a key part.

I think they are trying to force their patent to fit Twitters model, and it doesn't really fit.

silverbax88• 16 years ago

Agreed. The patent for the described system would be much more suited to Facebook or LinkedIn than Twitter. I think the lawsuit is because of the highly publicized Twitter accounts of some famous people. The description in the diagram of 'communities of people in various fields of endeavor' is so ridiculously vague that it could be describing a town, a bowling league or fans of the L.A. Lakers.

jdp232• 16 years ago

When I saw the headline my first thought was "more TechCrunch hyperbole." But it's true. The patent's title really is "Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people”.

Anyhow, that's how I read it too: all the independent claims seem to start with (a) selecting a field of endeavor and (b) compiling a list before doing stuff creating the community, which is not how Twitter works. If that's all there is, Twitter should ask the judge to sanction VS' lawyers for bringing a frivolous claim.

robinwauters• 16 years ago

When I saw this comment my first thought was "more TechCrunch bashing". But it's not. Rare these days :)

joebananas2• 16 years ago

Surely this patent would run into 1st amendment issues were it ever to go to court?

chopsueyar2• 16 years ago

How so?

joebananas2• 16 years ago

They're basically saying they have exclusive rights to people disclosing biographical information about themselves in an online community.

TheUSMarshall• 16 years ago

This is the equivalent of patenting the concept of product endorsements - i.e. if Wheaties had a patent on celebrities endorsing cereal. It seems that this patent would infringe on the freedom of the "celebrity" to choose how they want to connect with their fans.

vaksel• 16 years ago

I think the main problem with patents like this is that there is no accountability.

If the person who granted such a ridiculous patent was fired for negligence, maybe it'd motivate them to be a little more strict

kj12345• 16 years ago

Or maybe give the judge the option of ruling that the patent holder is abusing the patent system, the penalty for which would be releasing their patent portfolio into the public domain.

ohashi• 16 years ago

I approve of this idea. It would need a good way to hunt down real owners behind shell companies and such though to make sure they aren't just cheating.

vog• 16 years ago

Al least here in Europe, it would already help if the patent offices weren't paid on a per-granted-patent base.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

Of course it's ridiculous. They are hoping that twitter just pays them to go away. If it loks like twitter has a backbone and it's going to actual court, they can just drop the case. Why not? It's free to try.

stanleydrew2• 16 years ago

Well not entirely free. It will cost them something in court and legal fees right?

jat8502• 16 years ago

It depends. I am not a lawyer, and certainly not an American torts expert (or a tort expert in any nation) but I believe that certain states have statutes in place that allow the judge discretion in assigning the defendant's legal fees to the plaintiff, if the defendant wins the case.

kljensen2• 16 years ago

It costs quite a bit, even to deal with trivial cases. Six figures at a minimum for show up at the courthouse, mostly in attorney's fees.

meterplech• 16 years ago

Not if you get a lawyer to take your case for a % of the eventual settlement/suit. Which I think is a relatively common practice. Not sure how it works and I am not an expert, but I imagine a lot of enterprising lawyers would be willing to take that deal. Twitter will likely settle to end it, and they can take a good percentage.

iwwr• 16 years ago

Not a week goes by without another piece of news revealing the idiocy (or evilness) of patent law.

macov• 16 years ago

The problem with the patent system is that you can patent things that do not exist. Is it ridiculous?

snorkel• 16 years ago

Agreed. A more sane patent system would require a working demonstration, and further require that the demonstration must be performed each time the patent holder claims infringement. Any idea that can not be readily demonstrated in a practical sense should not be patentable.

No demo, no patent.

nitrogen• 16 years ago

What about things that are beyond the current technology, like Babbage's analytical engine? In general I agree with you, but should a numerical simulation or logical proof of feasibility be able to substitute for a demo?

srram• 16 years ago

Please stop this discussion, otherwise I will have to sue all of you based on my patent on virtual communities commenting on patent lawsuits on virtual communities

caf• 16 years ago

...and now that you've informed us, it's wilful infringement - double damages!

A1kmm• 16 years ago

Triple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Damages

zmonkeyz• 16 years ago

Invalidated by newsgroups and Jeffrey Dahmers posts.

rayval• 16 years ago

Another example of prior art would be the Electric Minds community, which was an offshoot of the Well in the mid-90s, and took the best and brightest people in certain fields to moderate online communities within that topic area. The people were "famous" in a certain space (although not to the average person-in-the-street).

See http://www.rheingold.com/electricminds/html/

nickolai• 16 years ago

is the concept of "Using legal action to enforce nonsensical patents" patentable ?

frisco• 16 years ago

See: Halliburton's Patent Trolling Patent

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se...

mlimm• 16 years ago

Patent troll

Take a look at "VS Technologies" website here - http://www.vstinfo.com/index.htm. Looking at the source code it was built with Microsoft Frontpage 5.0 ... nice.

cookiecaper• 16 years ago

I love how all of the figures on the patent are flowcharts.

Twitter Gets Sued For Letting Famous People Interact Online

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