Patent Lawsuit Threatens to Clip Twitter’s Wings | Threat Level | Wired.com

Description

TechRadium, a little known Texas-based player in the emergency mass-notification field, didn’t just wake up this month and decide to sue Twitter for patent infringement.

The company says it didn’t care about Twitter when the Twitterati was watching the tweets of NBA superstars, musicians, politicians and news outlets. But then TechRadium began seeing promotional materials and news accounts of companies, school districts and local governments using, or considering adopting, the microblogging service as their emergency notification system – muscling into TechRadium’s wheelhouse.

“Honestly, that’s what got us the attention of Twitter,” said Shawn Staples, TechRadium’s attorney. “We don’t really give a damn about social networking. TechRadium is concerned that it developed these patents by extending a lot of time and money and is protecting its market.”

Now the lawsuit, filed August 5 in a Texas federal court, could become a financial thorn in Twitter’s side . Heavily venture-funded, the free three-year-old microblogging service is working to find a business model .

Patent law is complex, and legal experts interviewed by Threat Level declined to predict the outcome of the lawsuit, but they agreed it’s not a frivolous claim. TechRadium appears to have some legal legs to stand on in the nation’s first lawsuit attacking Twitter’s tweeting protocol.

In fact, TechRadium has already used its patents to win a licensing agreement in a separate infringement case.

That case, also in Texas, targeted rival mass-notification company Blackboard of California. The lawsuit was dropped after Blackboard agreed to license the same three patents (.pdf) at issue in the Twitter case.

Blackboard at first claimed that the patents, dating to 2006, were invalid. But Blackboard did not produce evidence of “prior art,” or demonstrate that the patents were obvious. Now, experts say, the Blackboard settlement bolsters TechRadium’s case against Twitter . (.pdf)

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http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/patent-lawsuit-threatens-to-clip-twitters-wings/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/patent-lawsuit-threatens-to-clip-twitters-wings/