Twitter Faces Patent Infringement Lawsuit

Digital Dan writes "Twitter is being sued for patent infringement. Surprised? OK, probably not, but you'd think the plaintiff would at least wait for Twitter to actually make money before striking. According to TechCrunch: 'Twitter is being sued ... by TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company which makes mass notification systems for public safety organizations, the military, and utilities.' The abstract to patent #7130389 describes it: 'A digital notification and response system utilizes an administrator interface to transmit a message from an administrator to a user contact device. The system comprises a dynamic information database that includes user contact data, priority information, and response data. The administrator initiates distribution of the message based upon grouping information, priority information, and the priority order.' Two other patents are involved as well."

@TechRadium

[fpgaprogrammer]

@TechRadium, your #lawsuit is #bullshit.

Re:I'm honestly surprised...

[maraist]

Patents are evil, they should never have been added to our constitution. They serve no useful social role. Processes are what people come up with to get something useful done. They are not themselves the goal of any useful society or societal actor. The original (ill-conceived) intent of patents was to allow clever commoners to make a living by doing nothing but thinking things up. What this does is create artificial 'property' out of an otherwise unlimited resource (e.g. thought). Producing scarcity where none SHOULD exist.

So instead of negotiating price on prime real-estate. Or convincing somebody to give up their precious time to labor on your behalf, we instead have royalties, and more importantly, denial of service. Namely, I can prevent your innovation by strategically patenting random otherwise-useless things that I know can prevent you from accomplishing real work (that otherwise benefits society).

If I were strategically buying up land to prevent your rail-road, it would be the same thing.. Or if I were hiring the only people technically capable of doing your work (i.e. MS paying off big Linux gurus), then it would be the same thing. But, in those situations, we're dealing with real materials. IP is fictionally held ransom by the US founders. If we'd been founded 100 years before or 100 years later, we wouldn't have had IP. It's right up there with our funky archaic embeded masonic imagery.

Therefore suing for patent infringement is trolling. Constitution be dammned.

Re:I for one...

[TW Burger]

Yeah, Obama is evil and the Democrats are psychotic control freaks who want to do weird medical experiments on the US people and create an army of mutant zombie liberals that derive pleasure only by paying 80% taxes...

For crying out loud, boy, get a grip. The people at your HMO will do everything that they legally can to kill you rather than pay for your medical treatment. You should fear the people who want everything to be the same.

Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.