Twitter has acquired over 900 patents from IBM and entered into a cross-licensing agreement with the company.
The micro-blogging site made the announcement on Friday, January 31, and revealed that the patent acquisition took place a month earlier in December 2013.
"This acquisition of patents from IBM and licensing agreement provides us with greater intellectual property protection and gives us freedom of action to innovate on behalf of all those who use our service," said Ben Lee, Legal Director for Twitter.
However, the financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. With the acquisition of IBM patents, Twitter seems to have finally ended its spat with IBM.
Earlier in November 2013, Twitter disclosed in a regulatory filing that IBM had sent it a letter accusing the microblogging site of infringing three of the latter's patents. The letter also asked Twitter to be a part of settlement negotiations. However, at the time, Twitter was of the opinion that it could defend itself. The three IBM patent's that Twitter allegedly infringed were: "efficient retrieval of uniform resource allocators," "presenting advertising in an interactive service" and "programmatic discovery of common contacts."
However, with both IBM and Twitter coming to an agreement and looking to start afresh, as the deal would suggest, the two companies seem to be headed for a "productive relationship."
"We are pleased to reach this agreement with Twitter because it illustrates the value of patented IBM inventions and demonstrates our commitment to licensing access to our broad patent portfolio. We look forward to a productive relationship with Twitter in the future," said Ken King, General Manager of Intellectual Property for IBM.
Prior to its IPO in November, Twitter had 9 patents and 95 pending applications, a small number when compared to other technology companies. IBM, on the other hand, has "led the annual list of U.S. patent recipients for 21 consecutive years."
The patents acquired by Twitter relate to the company's business plans. One of the patents covers a means of enabling compliance with international shipping requirements. Another patent pertains to improved messaging, per the data posted on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site.
The deal implies that IBM has agreements with nearly every technology company around. It also marks Twitter's first direct patent acquisition.
