Twitter: 'We Promise To Not Be a Patent Troll' 103
Fluffeh writes "Twitter today unveiled a bold new commitment that will be made in writing to its employees — the company will not use any patents derived from employee inventions in offensive lawsuits without the inventor's permission. Twitter has written up a draft of what it calls the 'Innovator's Patent Agreement,' or IPA, which encourages its developers to invent without the fear that their inventions will be used for nefarious purposes. 'The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes,' Messinger wrote. 'We will not use the patents from employees' inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What's more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.'"
Cross-licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
Many corporations already cross-license their software patents. I think it would be better if Twitter promised to cross-license their software patents at zero cost to anybody who agreed to cross license theirs, and to maintain the registry AT COST. The cost should be virtually nothing, since it would just be a small database running in a cloud somewhere.
Then a few biggies like IBM might join this. As the fortune 500 dominoes tumbled, smaller guys would get in on the act. Anybody, even individuals should be allowed to join.
Eventually, only trolls would not be in the pact. The ultimate finally might involve an anti-trust suit, the SCOTUS, a suitcase full of cocaine and some balloon animals. Everybody wakes up next to a dead hooker and then the blackmailing begins. Next day, software patents are still on the books but for all intents and purposes no longer exist.
contrary to articles of incorporation (Score:2, Interesting)
unless this policy is actually enshrined into the articles of incorporation of the company, it is, unfortunately, bullshit. actually it's worse than that: it's corporate financial irresponsibility, and as such can result in the directors being ousted by the shareholders and could also result in the directors being prosecuted and struck off from ever being permitted to be directors, ever again.
professor muhammad yunus, economics professor and joint winner of the 2006 nobel peace prize, puts it best in his book "creating a world without poverty". another useful source is the documentary "The Corporation".
a Corporation's Directors are LEGALLY NOT ALLOWED to do anything OTHER than enact the articles of incorporation. for the directors to do otherwise is very very serious. i do not understand why directors do not understand this.
so for the directors to allow this announcement to be made means, quite simply, that unless there's been a shareholder meeting at which 75% of the shareholders agreed to have this new Patent Policy to be added to the Articles of Incorporation, they're straightforward lying through their teeth.
unfortunately, lying in order to get money is legally permissible and is not against the Articles of Incorporation.
Re:permission discussion (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe. Have you read some of their corporate writing? I haven't looked at it in the two years since I was thinking about applying there -- I was working on software with an engineer from there in a non-Twitter capacity -- and it is by far the most hippie-dippy company speak you could hope to find outside of a vegan dessert shop. The employee himself didn't strike me outwardly as a hippie, though he talk about how he loved being near the parks and bicycling around. So perhaps a clean-cut hippie. At the time I found their wording a little off-putting, but thinking about it now it's a hell of a lot better than the standard "you pledge your undying loyalty to us and applaud for all of our decisions, no matter how stupid, and we'll in turn feel free to cut you loose any time we feel like it" of most corporations.