Here Come The Twitter Patent Lawsuits. TechRadium Files The First One.

Twitter is being sued again, and that instance it isn’t some angry baseball manager who doesn’t like humans impersonating him on the service. that moment it is a little more serious. Twitter is being sued for patent infringement by TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company which makes mass notification systems for public safety organizations, the military, and utilities.

TechRadium claims that it thought up the whole concept of mass notifications, and points to three issued patents: Nos. 7,130,389, 7,496,183, and 7,519,165. According to the lawsuit, which was filed yesterday on August 4, 2009 in Houston, Texas (full document embedded at bottom of post):

TechRadium develops, sells, and services mass notification systems that allow a group administrator or “message Author” to originate a without data that will be delivered simultaneously via multiple communication gateways to members of a group of “message Subscribers.” A member of a subscriber group can receive such note in their choice of any combination of voice letter, text letter e-mail and so on. that technology is patented by the Plaintiff, TechRadium, and marketed under the trade name “IRIS”™ (Immediate Response info System).

Among other things, the patented IRIS™ technology eliminated the need for an Author to send multiple identical messages, and allowed Subscribers to choose the most convenient design of notification for them.

Twitter works across text messaging and e-mail, but not voicemail (yet). The very concept of unifying different letter communication systems is what is in dispute here. Whatever the merits of the lawsuit, you can’t say Twitter didn’t see that one coming. Way back in a February, 2009 strategy meeting (see Twitter Papers), the company discussed potential legal threats.

Legal

• We will be sued for patent infringement, repeatedly and often.

• Should we get a great patent attorney to proactively go after these patents (We need to talk about that more, we are unsatisfied)

I hope it hired that “great patent attorney” considering that could just be the beginning.

TechRadium Vs. Twitter patent Lawsuit -

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