The First Lawsuit Against Twitter

tweeter_logoThe major disadvantage of creating something simple and easy to use that is rapidly gaining popularity is that there will always be people that come and say, “Hey, it was my idea!” This is what Twitter is experiencing right now. A Texas-based company called TechRadium just filed a lawsuit against the popular social website, based on a patent to “allow a group administrator or ‘message author’ to originate a single message that will be delivered simultaneously via multiple communication gateways to members of a group of ‘message subscribers’ over e-mail, text message, or another platform.”

This is all very interesting but most likely it will end bad for TechRadium. Wired summarized the opinions of different groups, stating that this seems like “a ridiculously obvious use of modern technology.” We think TechRadium is hoping to get at least some recognition, because compensation is really out of reach at this point. Some internal documents leaked from Twitter clearly show that the company is expecting some lawsuits: “We will be sued for patent infringement, repeatedly and often.”

The strange thing is that there are a lot of social websites on the Internet, but TechRadium chose Twitter. Why? Perhaps because of its growing popularity? However, this summer, Twitter hired its first general counsel from Google’s legal ranks, so we think everything will work out fine with our bellowed Twitter.

© 2012 Sporkings. All rights reserved.
LDN.cm Publishing Limited.