Twitter and IBM Agree to Terms on 900 Patents

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Twitter, whose company logo is pictured here on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on the date of its IPO, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013, has purchased 900 patents from IBM.

Image: Richard Drew/Associated Press

By Jason Abbruzzese2014-01-31 16:28:39 UTC

Twitter has purchased more than 900 patents from IBM, a move that should help put recent infringement claims to rest.

The news, announced by IBM in a press release, comes a few months after IBM claimed that Twitter had violated intellectual property rights on three patents. The allegations surfaced in documents from Twitter's IPO, which occurred on Nov. 7, 2013.

...we recently received a letter from International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM, alleging that we infringe on at least three U.S. patents held by IBM, and inviting us to negotiate a business resolution of the allegations. The three patents specifically identified by IBM in the letter were U.S. Patent No. 6,957,224: Efficient retrieval of uniform resource locators, U.S. Patent No. 7,072,849: Method for presenting advertising in an interactive service and U.S. Patent No. 7,099,862: Programmatic discovery of common contacts.

Twitter said it did not agree with IBM's assessment, while IBM suggested the two companies come to a "business solution."

A search for Twitter patents through the United States Patent and Trademark Office found that Patent No. 6,957,224 had been transferred from IBM to Twitter. The other two patents from the complaint remain under IBM.

Investors and analysts voiced concern before Twitter's IPO with the company's lack of patents — it reportedly held only nine.

IBM, by contrast, currently holds more than 41,000 patents and has previously made similar deals with Facebook and Google.

"This acquisition of patents from IBM and licensing agreement provides us with greater intellectual property protection and gives us freedom of action to innovate on behalf of all those who use our service," said Ben Lee, legal director for Twitter.

Twitter and IBM declined to provide terms of the deal or specifics about the patents.

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