Twitter has
bought 900 patents and signed a cross-licensing agreement with IBM,
making peace with Big Blue and bulking up on its intellectual property
portfolio as it takes on larger rivals Google and Facebook.
The agreement comes after International Business Machines accused
Twitter in November - on the eve of its high-profile initial public
offering - of infringing three of its patents. At the time, it
underscored how few patents the six-year-old social media company
possessed in relation to more established rivals.
A cross-licensing agreement will help safeguard Twitter against similar claims in the future.
IBM is
one of the industry's largest research spenders and stockpilers of
intellectual property, a consistent leader in US patent filings and the
owner of some 41,000 patents.
Twitter
is following on the heels of Facebook, which itself faced similar
claims before its own 2012 IPO. The world's largest social network has
since gone on a patent-buying spree, acquiring intellectual property
from tech bellwethers, including Microsoft Corp and IBM.
"This
acquisition of patents from IBM and licensing agreement provide us with
greater intellectual property protection and give us freedom of action
to innovate on behalf of all those who use our service," Ben Lee,
Twitter's legal director, said in a joint statement with IBM on Friday.
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