Back in July 2007, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey filed a patent application for a new system they were working on, which allowed users to send messages, not just to specific recipients, but a broader user base. That project has since evolved into one of the biggest social networking platforms in the world — but the application has been spending its time in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Until yesterday.
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The Twitter co-founders were granted a patent on their system which computes follower/followed relationships and shares messages accordingly regardless of which device is sending or receiving the message or how it is sent (SMS, email, via the API, etc). Yep, they’ve managed to patent the core functionality of the service.
Technically, the terms of the patent cover a system which allows “device independent point to multipoint communication” where “destination endpoints are independent of the source entry points, and the message sender does not need to have knowledge of the endpoints, or endpoint-specific user addresses.” It’s that very broadcast quality, which was achieved by allowing a user to follow another without a reciprocal follow-back or approval (on public accounts, at least), which has allowed for the worldwide discussions and trending topics that have made Twitter such a powerful force in spreading information.
If you’ve been observing the legal battles ranging in courts around the world between tech giants like Apple and Samsung, you may expect this latest development to bolster Twitter’s patent arsenal and see it pursuing any copycats. But that seems unlikely when you consider the fact that the company has taken a public stand against unnecessary offensive litigation with its Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which is essentially a promise to its employees that, while it will file for patents, it will only use their patents for defensive purposes. If they’re sold off to others, the same rules apply.
