April 18, 2012

Twitter's "Innovator's Patent Agreement"

Marco Arment, writing about Twitter’s «Innovator’s Patent Agreement»:

A patented «invention», even when patented under these terms, is still patented. It’s not free for anyone to use, and willfully infringing upon it is still dangerous and unwise.

(…)

I didn’t patent [my] older inventions because I couldn’t afford to. I probably could have patented some of the newer ones, but I didn’t even look into it enough to do basic prior-art searches. I fundamentally disagree that software patents (and many other types of patents) are a net gain for society, and I can’t participate in that system in good conscience. That’s a stand that I’d like to see more companies adopt.

Agreed. I realize that Twitter might feel that they have no other choice than to get as many patents as possible. Given this, Twitter’s IPA is better than nothing. But it’s definitely not the solution to this mess.

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