Twitter is being sued by TechRadium, a Texas-based firm that developed a mass notification and emergency response service that delivers messages to multiple contacts simultaneously.
TechRadium alleges in its lawsuit that the patent it holds for its IRIS (Immediate Response Information System) emergency notification system is being infringed upon by Twitter, according to the lawsuit.
TechRadium's IRIS service allows a group administrator or message author to originate a single message that is dispersed to multiple recipients simultaneously. A subscriber to IRIS can receive the message through voice message, e-mail, text message or other notification method of their choosing.
TechRadium alleges that Twitter's service is similar to IRIS and that because it holds patents and licenses technology that can author messages, the microblogging service is costing the Texas-based company money. Furthermore, TechRadium claims it is willing to license its patented technology to Twitter for a "reasonable royalty rate," according to court documents obtained by Wired.
For its part, Twitter seems to be aware that it would eventually begin to face lawsuits. Last month Michael Arrington's blog, TechCrunch, obtained numerous internal documents from Twitter which included notes from meetings.
Amongst the notes obtained by TechCrunch was the internal realization that the company would be sued for patent infringement "repeatedly and often." Twitter acknowledges the lawsuits that seem inevitable and notes that it needs to find a "great patent attorney" who will "actively go after these patents."
Unfortunately for Twitter, TechRadium may have beaten the microblogging service to the punch.
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