Pull-To-Refresh Inventor Says There’s No Need To Worry About Twitter’s Patent | Hacker News Reader

Pull-To-Refresh Inventor Says There’s No Need To Worry About Twitter’s Patent

cultofmac.com

28 pointspatpng18 comments

Not sure why this was written up by CultofMac, aside from pageviews.

The inventor doesn't have control anymore, and therefore no say in how the patent will or won't be enforced. "Don't worry, it'll be fine" is meaningless.

Unless the inventor held onto "prior art" that inspired him that he could pull out as a wild card if Twitter tries to enforce the patent.

I don't know if he can do that and still be considered to have been acting "in good faith" when he participated in the patent application.

Probably not, but to whom is the good faith obligation to? Twitter or the USPTO?

Another commenter stated that he patented defensively when negotiating to be bought out by twitter. If that is the case, he probably doesn't have a good faith obligation from the time he filed the patent. The question then rests on how the patent was represented at the deal. Did Twitter pay more because they factored in the value of his patent? If so, then I reckon good faith would extend to those negotiations and he'd only be in the clear as long as he did not misrepresent the patent.

Probably not, but to whom is the good faith obligation to? Twitter or the USPTO?

I don't think that makes a difference to the inventor, except that the USPTO is less motivated to come after him.

Is the "defensive" use of patents explicitly codified somehow, or is there a body of precedent explicitly cited, supporting this notion? If current practice is based on precedent, then this is unfortunate. What we have basically carries the weight of law, but was hacked together by fractionally clueful bureaucrats on a substrate that predates a widespread understanding of many of the concepts involved. (Or any understanding at all, in some cases.)

There was question recently as to why Apple hasn't implemented this feature in many of its own applications.

IIRC Loren filed this patent "defensively" prior to the Twitter acquisition. Of course, his original intent is irrelevant now.

As a point of fact, patents weren't intended to act as munitions in a "defensive arsenal." They are so glaringly broken, it's not even funny.

Really? I don't disagree with patents, especially in the software area, being broken. I'm trying to think what else they might be meant to act as. If I was to patent a novel Widget, it would be to protect/defend it against others copying the Widget without my permission. No?

It's the other way around. The original intent of patents is to disclose the making of a device to the public domain in exchange for an exclusive royalty and eventually, after a certain amount of time, for the device to become public domain.

Since the royalty is exclusive it means that you are the only one that is allowed to profit from the patent and here comes the defendability of patents.

However if you really want to protect something then, by all means, keep it secret. Coca-Cola and Pepsi formulas are kept secret and will not be patented, for example.

Yes, that is the original intent. But now the wording of patents is deliberately vague so as to make them mushy and somewhat meaningless, which is intentional to increase their collision cross-section for use as weapons against other companies.

Patents are no longer just used to protect the Widget. They are blurred into generalized legal bludgeons using the widget only as a pretext.

There have been oppressive regimes that distorted the existing legal framework to use as a pretext for oppressing dissent. There have been nations using various combinations of fact and lies as a pretext for going to war.

Laws are fine, but laws subverted to be used as a pretext are an abomination.

National sovereignty is fine as a foundation concept in international law, but deliberate distortions that use the protection of sovereignty as a false pretext for war are abominations.

Patents that truly respect prior art and are crafted to describe a specific mechanism are fine, but used as a vague and mushy pretext to enable large companies to arbitrarily bludgeon you with their legal department are an abomination.

Wouldn't Tweetie itself constitute Prior Art that invalidates this patent application? I believe this behavior was in the app long before the application was filed (which was just the day before Twitter announced the acquisition of the app).

Viewing the behavior might not be enough to consider the method inside to have been revealed.

But also, in the US, you have a one year grace period after public disclosure to file for a patent.

I think simply viewing this behavior would be sufficient for any competent software engineer to understand the method.

However, I was not aware of the grace period. That's the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks. I wonder how long Tweetie had this functionality before the patent was filed.

The end of the article seems to say that since people copied the feature between when it was first invented (by Loren B.) and when the patent application was filed, that counts as prior art. IANAL, but isn’t that false, if the period between the invention & patent application is short enough? What is it, a year or two?

Edit: Gojomo says elsewhere in this discussion that the grace period between public disclosure & the latest you can file is one year.

This article is much clearer on this point than the linkbait that was posted last time, but: This is a patent application, not a patent. When/if it is granted, the claims will not be anywhere near as broad as they are now.

Don't they have to patent this now that the US patent system is first-to-file? Otherwise, others would be free to patent it and start charging Twitter royalties.

The US patent system is also not supposed to grant patents that have evidence of "prior art." Should another company apply for the patent after Twitter is using it, Twitter can simply show the feature existed prior to the patent filing date.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com