Twitter has agreed to buy 900 patents from IBM, with the two tech titans steering clear of courtrooms to reach the cross-license agreement.
While financial terms weren’t disclosed, as you’d expect, the move essentially gives Twitter more protection in the realm of intellectual property (IP) as it looks to further hone and build out its short-form messaging platform.
The deal follows a regulatory filing dating back to November, when IBM invited Twitter to negotiate a “business resolution” for the alleged misuse. The three offending patent-infringements are related to the “…Efficient retrieval of uniform resource locators (URLs), Method for presenting advertising in an interactive service, and Programmatic discovery of common contacts.”
IBM holds more than 41,000 patents in its arsenal, 6,809 of which were awarded last year alone.
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➤ Twitter buys 900 IBM patents | AP [via Reuters]
Feature Image Credit – DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images
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