Twitter patents sending messages, promises not to sue everyone Twitter has patented a messaging service in which users follow each other and send messages that don't have specific recipients - or in other words, Twitter. The approved patent, originally filed in 2007 but published this week, describes pretty much how Twitter and tweeting work, and lists Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Biz …
worryingly there are lots of so called "techies" who have never heard of usenet. Take Virgin Media, for example. When I had problems posting on usenet a few weeks ago, I logged a support call. The first reply from the "engineer" asked if I had "contacted usenet to see if they had any problems".
Now that's the social network for me!
I suggest a brown colour scheme and the logo should be a cartoon turd. Instead of "tweets" you could have "farts" and instead of the so called "fire hose" you should have the "Shitter sewer overflow".
If they do sue and you don't have the money to fight it - negotiate with them to buy you out - they could merge the two services together and create "Bird Shit" - the social network that drops 160 character messages directly on your head from the cloud!
Bugger..
shitter.com owned by Worldwide Media Inc.. "mostwanteddomains.com". er.. *most* wanted??
..they suggest I make an offer..
I looked up "shittier.com" to see if that had gone (it has), to find whois.net suggested "crapline.com" (available for $400) as an alternative.
St Helena TLD is available, though: shitter.sh ..
Crapline.com eh? Not so much a social network more of a rival to Direct Line insurance or maybe Greenline coaches - I could imagine Crapline would do a roaring trade on the busy Bracknell-Slough-Heathrow-London route!
Back on topic - shitter.sh/it could work marketing wise as the homepage. It's poetic too as its a shit with a slash midway through!
Go for it I say! I promise to sign up and spread the shit amoung my friends and family! I think you're on to a winner here! Looking forward to being one of your first "shitizens"!
There is a network connecting all of us, no matter how socially isolated. This network is growing in complexity, and no-one fully understands it in all its complexity; but it links us all - our homes, our businesses, our theaters, our places of worship. Without this network, modern society as we know it would not be possible.
This network is
Modern Plumbing.
(I don't have the full thing memorized, but thank you Blue Man Group.)
Is that the patent office only sees prior art as what is already patented, not that which is already in use for many a year. This is FUNDAMENTAL to the problem with the USPTO. Their vision of prior art is flawed in many ways. They run on the assumption that everything should be patented. Most (hopefully) software people (not companies) are on the assumption that "software is good" and release it willingly without patent restrictions.
So, the cycle goes on and on. We get people who try to parse the differences in words ("is") and we spend time in legal battles when it would be more productive to write better software instead. Just think if the basics of the internet had been patented back in the day (I shudder at the thought).
The USPTO is directed by two bodies: Uncle Sam and patent lawyers. For them the current patent system works fine and there is no need to change anything.
Uncle Sam makes a nice little revenue stream from USPTO. Just make it easy to get patents and more people will apply and more $$$. There is no QA - you can't sue Uncle Sam for issuing a crap patent that kills your business.
And the patent lawyers love it too. Quite a nice income for cranking through patent applications. However the real money comes when patents are challenged and the whole lot goes to court. This is far mre likely to happen with crap patents than with good, so where's the motivation to improve patent quality?
It's complete twaddle to say that the patent is only going to be used "defensively". In the US if you hold a patent and it can be shown that you know your patent was violated and you did nothing about it, you forfeit the patent. So Twitter MUST go after anybody violating any claim of the patent.
I had a manufacturing company and one aspect of a product I made violated the patent of a competitor. They did finally contact me, or rather, their lawyers contacted me and I faxed (it was a while ago) them "prior art" from a book published in the 1950's that had a nice drawing of what they patented. I received another letter from the lawyers that essentially said in 4 or 5 paragraphs, "Never Mind". The interesting bit was that the book I had was well known in the industry and in most libraries of engineers in that field. I hope they spent loads of money getting that patent. <eg>
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
