Twitter Beats Patent Troll Who Patented Letting Famous People Interact Online

from the nicely-done dept

Earlier this year, we covered how an operation called VS Technologies -- really a patent lawyer by the name of Dinesh Agarwal, held patent 6,408,309 on a "Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people." He then sued Twitter over this patent, though we couldn't figure out how Twitter actually infringed on the claims in the patent itself. While we were disappointed, a few weeks back, that the judge didn't dismiss the case pre-trial, it looks like the trial itself was pretty speedy, and the jury wasted little time in agreeing with Twitter that it did not infringe at all. Of course, it might not be over yet, as VS might still try to appeal, but the patent claim here is so weak that it really can't be in his best interests to push forward (not that that's stopped some patent trolls before). Either way, it's good to see Twitter at least stick it out and agree not to settle, as I'm sure there were opportunities to do along the way.

Filed Under: communicating, dinesh ararwal, famous people, patent troll, patents, social networks
Companies: twitter