Twitter paid $36 million over IBM patent threat
24 03 2014Twitter’s first annual financial results were revealed on Thursday. Buried deep in the document is the price it paid IBM after it was confronted with a patent infringement threat by Big Blue: $36 million. Bloomberg was first to highlight the price tag.
IBM sent a letter to Twitter in November saying it was infringing at least three IBM patents. That resulted in a negotiation that ended up with Twitter getting a license to IBM’s patents, acquiring about 900 of them for itself, and (we now know) paying $36 million.
The patent exchange was spun in positive terms, as something that would boost Twitter’s intellectual property portfolio to help it defend itself from other threats against competitors. The exchange does do that, but this “deal” wouldn’t have happened but at the end of IBM’s massive patent gun, which was pointed at Twitter right before its IPO.
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