Twitter Sued on Patent Infringement Allegations

Miriam Rozen

Texas Lawyer

On Tuesday, Sugar Land, Texas-based TechRadium filed a patent infringement complaint against Twitter Inc., the company that owns the social networking site that allows people to share information via short messages called tweets.

William Shawn Staples says his client TechRadium develops, sells and services mass notification systems and owns two patents related to digital notification systems.

In its complaint against Twitter, TechRadium alleges Twitter infringes upon those patents by offering for sale and use TechRadium's patented technology without licenses to do so.

Also in its complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, TechRadium seeks economic damages and a permanent injunction barring Twitter from infringing on its patents.

Staples says TechRadium initiated the complaint when the company learned municipal governments were considering using Twitter for public emergency alerts.

TechRadium markets its technology to municipal governments to use for emergency alert systems, Staples says.

Staples also represents TechRadium in patent litigation filed in the Eastern District of Texas against Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard Inc., which makes software for school districts to communicate with students' parents.

A focus on that litigation delayed TechRadium's attention to the Twitter allegations, Staples says. "It's hard to work on more than one big case at a time," he says.

A call to San Francisco-based Twitter.com's press office was not immediately returned. Staples, an attorney who works for The Mostyn Law Firm in Houston, having moved in June from The O'Quinn Law Firm, says he does not yet know who is representing the defendant.

This article first appeared on the Tex Parte Blog, the blog of Texas Lawyer.