A patent troll called Kootol Software has put Twitter on alert. The ‘company’, which sports a corporate logo (and name) that is suspiciously reminiscent of Google’s, this morning said it has sent a caution notice to Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and co to express “concerns” about possible intellectual property violations.
The patent application in question (a patent number hasn’t been assigned yet) is titled “A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed.”
The patent is said to cover “innovative technology providing dynamic and real-time communication”. According to a press release issued by Kootol, the “invention” allows people to publish and send messages using one-way or two-way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network, and to power real-time search for those users.
Kootol’s website menu includes mentions of ‘products’ and ‘solutions’, but it’s important to note Kootol does not actually provide any products or solutions at this point.
They appear to be looking for investors to develop a Twitter competitor of sorts. Only not really, because this isn’t the type of company that ever builds anything.
Patent applications for their so-called invention have also been filed in India, Canada and Europe, but it’s important to note there are no lawsuits by Kootol against Twitter based on any of them, at least not yet.
Yogesh Rathod, director of India-based Kootol, claims he is the inventor and owner of the patent application, and in a press statement says Kootol is currently in the process of “examining its position”. They state that sending Twitter a caution notice is simply to give the startup the opportunity to examine the patent application at the “very earliest stage”.
Basically, they’re trying to get Twitter to license their technology.
Yogesh Rathod says he owns some 60 patents in total.