Marco Arment: Be Skeptical of Twitter's Innovator's Patent Agreement
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Twitter’s “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” – Marco.org »
I recently wrote about Twitter’s promise to use patents only for defensive purposes—the “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” (“IPA,” not to be confused with this). The link above leads to a post by Marco Arment, warning us to read the agreement carefully and maintain a healthy skepticism about the potential loopholes in Twitter’s recent patent move. It’s a fair warning, and a good point.
Nilay Patel made brief mention over at The Verge of the “fair amount of flexibility” the agreement leaves for Twitter. But Arment really lays out the manner in which Twitter could, if necessary for business reasons, make an end-run around the whole thing.
I don’t think they would do that. If they wanted the option to sneak through loopholes, they wouldn’t have been so attention-seeking with the IPA announcement in the first place.