Twitter Inc., the biggest U.S. microblogging service, won a trial in which closely held VS Technologies LLC alleged infringement of a patent for building virtual communities. On October 31, 2011, a federal jury in Norfolk, Virginia, cleared Twitter of charges brought against it by VS Technologies LLC (“VS”) for allegedly infringing on VS’s patent for a “Method and System for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people” (patent number 6,408,309), which it obtained in 2002.
In its complaint, filed on January 18, 2011, VS alleged that Twitter “creates and makes publicly available, interactive, virtual communities and profiles of people in various fields of endeavor” in violation of its patent. In response, Twitter primarily argued that VS’s patent was invalid under the recent Supreme Court case Bilski v. Kappos, which held, in part, that a process is patent-eligible if (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing (the “machine-or-transformation” test). Finally, Twitter argued that even if VS’s patent was valid, its service works differently than the system described in the patent such that Twitter’s service does not infringe on VS’s patent.
Twitter, which says it has more than 100 million active users, argued that its service works differently than the VS system covered by the patent. San Francisco-based Twitter had urged the jury to find the patent invalid. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury found that Twitter was not liable and refused to award the $8.4 million in damages claimed by VS; the jury found not only that Twitter did not infringe VS’s patent, but agreed with Twitter that the patent was invalid because it did not describe a novel invention. Had the jury found otherwise, any website on which individuals maintain profiles and can interact as an online community may have been in jeopardy.
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Author: Taruni Suresh
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