Twitter allows its Engineers to Decide the Future of its Patents

Twitter has announced it will adopt a policy for use of patents in which the engineers responsible for its development can control its use.It is a system dubbed IPA (Innovator's Patent Agreement), which seeks that patents do not impede technological development and that engineers can control the use of their inventions.

Much of today's world of technology is marked by the continuing struggle among firms for patent-related issues. Cases such as Apple and Samsung and Google and Oracle are examples of the use that businesses are making technological properties. For many of these battles, far from achieving the defense of property, only serve to slow the development of new technologies.

Twitter wanted to demonstrate their opposition to such litigation. "We thought a lot about how patents can be used in the future and see that some may use to prevent innovation of others," written in the Twitter Blog. To

Contrary to this possibility, Twitter has opted for a new philosophy. In the network of microblogs have chosen IPA, a system with which to undertake their workers patents will only be used in court for defensive purposes. In this way, Twitter has explained that it intends that the engineers who invent their patents have the power to decide their future.

Traditionally, engineers tend to give companies the ownership rights to the technologies they design. Thus, companies are those that can have claims on patents as they are of his property. Twitter bet is to change this philosophy.

The company may use and defend patents, but for offensive action must have the approval of the engineer responsible for the technology."With IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon" have commented on Twitter.

Furthermore, the intention of Twitter is that this recognition of the engineers on their patents to be extrapolated to the securities in case of sale. In this way, Twitter will allow engineers require that patent, once sold, used for the purpose for which it was designed.

According to Twitter, IPA intend to take later this year. The company has published the terms of use of this new system to enable web users to view their performance and suggest any changes or variations that may help improve it.