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Worth noting that the inventor has said that he won't enforce this patent. https://twitter.com/#!/lorenb/status/21684045608 https://twitter.com/#!/lorenb/status
by dominik 15y ago
Worth noting that the inventor has said that he won't enforce this patent. https://twitter.com/#!/lorenb/status/21684045608 https://twitter.com/#!/lorenb/status/21684045608
(That said, as commenters below correctly point out, Twitter, not Loren, owns the patent and gets to decide whom to enforce it against).
- dcurtis 15y agoInterestingly, as he no longer works at Twitter, he no longer owns or controls the patent.
- ceejayoz 15y agoAssuming the patent is Twitter's and not Loren's personal property.
- masklinn 15y agoThe patent is ATEBITS LLC's, and I understand Atebits is now a subsidiary of Twitter. So the patent would indeed be Twitter's, Loren is listed as the inventor but is not the assignee.
- ceejayoz 15y agoHe probably shouldn't have been promising not to use a patent he didn't own anymore, then. Not cool, unless there's a private agreement requiring his consent for patent usage.
- iamdave 15y agoEither this, or negotiated/set a better expectation that he isn't going to bring certain inventions with him to Twitter. Granted, this probably would have made it harder for an agreement on terms regarding his place at Twitter to come into existence.
- noonespecial 15y agoPatents are like the toxic waste of innovation. You promise yourself to keep them safely contained, but its hard to do in the real world and once they spill, they contaminate everything around them, making the ground uninhabitable for 20 odd years.
- natesm 15y agoThe correct way to do that would have been to just release it without patenting it, no? He was the first one to do it, so his prior art would invalidate any future patents, and we'd all be free to use it without any fear.
- mcherm 15y agoI really wish patents worked that way. Unfortunately, they don't. If something is patented, then no one else can patent it -- that's pretty clear and the patent office enforces it fairly well. If something is "obvious" (to one of ordinary skill) or if something has already been done, then it SHOULD not be patentable... but it is quite common for such things to be patented anyway. To be fair, it is unreasonable for the patent office to know about every thing which has ever been done, but still these things get patented. Once a patent is issued, there is a presumption by the courts that it is valid. You can contest this, and use prior art to invalidate the patent but it will require litigation and will be VERY EXPENSIVE. You can "use it without fear" as long as you don't mind paying a trivial $100,000 or more in litigation costs. I would be very pleased if someone knowledgeable about the practice of patent law would write in to correct me -- I really wish it didn't work like this -- but from what I have seen I believe that there IS a real danger that things which have been "released" wind up patented later.
- noonespecial 15y agoIf something is patented, then no one else can patent it I wish that were also true. In reality patents overlap hugely, and a line of trolls can form for the same feature. You have to spend the same 100k to show that another patent, issued earlier, also covered this idea, even if that patent was yours.
- wmf 15y agoOne solution to this problem is a defensive publication: basically you write a patent application, send it to the patent office (so they can use it as prior art), but don't ask for it to be patented. Unfortunately, writing the application has a nontrivial cost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_publication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_publication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_invention_registration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_invention_registratio...
- philip1209 15y agoHe said that he wasn't planning on it - that's non-binding and ambiguous.
- mattezell 15y agoYeah, I have seen this in use for some time in high profile applications - seemingly indicating that it is not being enforced. The Android Facebook app has this pull-to-refresh on its news feed - has for the last handful of updates. Pulse News also has used this same behavior for quite some time... It would seem that either these (and others) have been overlooked or the patent is indeed not being enforced at this time.