Twitter Inc (TWTR) Is Indeed Concerned About Patents Shield, Says This Expert

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), even though the company may sometimes come off as very casual about its intellectual property shield against lawsuits and rivals, is indeed very concerned about patents, Chris Carani said in a discussion with Corey Johnson on Bloomberg.

The topic of Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) and patents was brought up as the Johnson and Carini, partner at McAndrews Held & Malloy, along with Bloomberg’s Alex Barinka were talking about International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and how it has once again nabbed the most number of patents (7,500) in 2014 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) bought 900 patents from International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) soon after its debut in the New York Stock Market in November 2013. The deal which was announced in January last year ended a budding patent dispute between the two companies.

“Even Twitter itself, as maybe overtly as anti-patent as they might come off in some of their talk, I think their actions have largely spoken and told a different story. From the get-go, they have been aggressively acquiring intellectual property,” Carini said.

Case in point is the acquisition of patents from IBM. He also said that Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has a strong pipeline of patents pending at the USPTO. Twitter has been issued nine patents and had 95 pending patents when it conducted its initial public offering.

The McAndrews Held & Malloy partner said that people should keep in mind that the social media company is a very young one with its founding in 2006. The patent process, he said, takes from three to five years from being filed to being granted by the USPTO.

Carini also noted that it is a bit of a myth that startup can forgo intellectual property protection.

Bain Capital’s Brookside Capital owned about 2.36 million Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) shares by the end of the third quarter of 2014, a 35% decrease in the fund’s holdings in the social media company compared to its holding in the previous quarter.