Twitter Faces Patent Infringement Lawsuit

Digital Dan writes "Twitter is being sued for patent infringement. Surprised? OK, probably not, but you'd think the plaintiff would at least wait for Twitter to actually make money before striking. According to TechCrunch: 'Twitter is being sued ... by TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company which makes mass notification systems for public safety organizations, the military, and utilities.' The abstract to patent #7130389 describes it: 'A digital notification and response system utilizes an administrator interface to transmit a message from an administrator to a user contact device. The system comprises a dynamic information database that includes user contact data, priority information, and response data. The administrator initiates distribution of the message based upon grouping information, priority information, and the priority order.' Two other patents are involved as well."

Comments

Re:I for one... Who grants this stuff?

[davidsyes]

A bunch of mad people's paid-off stooges grant this stuff. Just as you indicated the prior art methods, it is unbelievable that the USPTO is THIS damned "overwhelmed". There should be a moratorium on all new tech patents issuance having applications dating back to, oh, say 2004, and a (public) review of all tech patents involved in anti-competitive activities dating from 1992 forward.

How can these "people" in that company suing Twitter even DARE bring themselves forward to sue. It is incredibly easy for database tools such as Lotus Approach, Borland/Corel/et al Paradox, ms' access, the various CRM tools build in LAMP/AMP, and more, and much of it is just plain common sense-enabled after a couple of hours of wrangling out a basic set of parameters.

-- User goes to browser/input device

-- user enters some tidbit of info

-- designated input triggers response to an action list (isn't this starting to sound like JIT product manufacturing/tracking, say, Expandable?)

-- action triggers reports to cognizant persons in the various departments, the vendors/suppliers/contract manufacturers outside the company, AP/AR handle the cost accounting/other accounting/inventory matters....

Expandable is from AT LEAST 1999, and we used it when i was a 400-person company from 1997-1999 and it got replaced by Oracle stuff. PeopleSoft ALONE had a massive set of tools for doing such things. We even used Vantive, which got knocked off from our company when that fiber optic company and their ORCA/Oracle slayers came in and ruthlessly waged battle internally in OUR CONFERENCE ROOMS to purge things like Expandable, Vantive, and other internally-built databases.

Techwhatever from Texas will probably be found to be a patent troll because other business model attempts aren't so rosy these days.