Twitter today introduced a new patent license it’s calling the
Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which allows the company to continue to
file patents on technology its engineers develop while assuring that
those engineers and others won’t file lawsuits with the patents except
as a defensive countermeasure. The company said in a blog post
that it worries patents “may be used to impede the innovation of
others,” and that its new license is designed to protect the company’s
ability to file for and use patents freely while allowing engineers and
other stakeholders significant control over how they might be used in
litigation.
The new license has already made a few people happy. Loren Brichter, who worked on the Twitter app for more than a year and developed the iconic (and now in a pending patent application) pull-to-refresh gesture, tweeted:
