Heralding a ?new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers,? Twitter released a draft of its Innovator?s Patent Agreement (IPA) on Tuesday.? Typically, employees sign an agreement that grants the company the legal right to any patents filed that relate to the employee?s work.? The patent can then be used by the company in litigation, either offensively or for defensive purposes. Twitter?s IPA is unique in that the company promises not to use the patents in offensive litigation without permission from its employees.? They will only be used for defensive purposes.? Furthermore, ?this control flows with the patents? so if the patents are sold, they can only be used as the inventor intended.
For many law firms, intellectual property litigation is an area that is thriving.? Demand for IP litigation continues to buck the negative trends in the overall legal market, as we noted earlier this year.? Peer Monitor data reported a 6.2% increase in demand for IP litigation in 2011. Fending off patent trolls, high stakes litigation involving market equals ? especially in the high tech industry, and more global IP litigation have all been cited as some of the factors contributing to growth in this practice area.
Associate professor Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University School of Law and blogger on Internet law matters was interviewed by Reuters regarding the Twitter announcement.? He believes the company?s reputation could rise among software engineers, some of whom have not been happy about having their patents used in litigation against other companies.? He said, ?Unquestionably, it?s an effort to define Twitter?s brand in the marketplace and to signal that its perhaps more engineering-friendly than companies that wouldn?t make such a promise.?
The IPA will be implemented by Twitter later this year and ?it will apply to all patents issued to [their] engineers, both past and present.? The company has posted the IPA on GitHub in an effort to encourage discussion and share feedback among companies that might want to implement a similar arrangement.? It will be interesting to see if other companies adopt this approach or something similar in the future.
Posted by Marianne Purzycki
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