Twitter Turbulence

Jonathan Bernstein crisis management, crisis public relations, Crisis Response

An interesting, and silly, lawsuit has been filed against Twitter by Texas-based emergency alert provider TechRadium. Their complaint? They say the widespread use of the service by governments and organizations as an emergency notification system violates their patents. The worst part? It appears that none of their patents have even been labeled as specifically for “emergency notification systems!”

A recent post from the Law.com Legal Blog Watch has more details:

TechRadium claims that Twitter’s “core functionality” falls within the range of technology covered by TechRadium’s patents. When organizations tweet about road closures, fires or bad weather, the company claims its patent rights are being violated. And that’s happening more frequently, as municipalities and large corporations are using Twitter to alert the public about fires, hurricanes, road closures and other emergencies.

I doubt this lawsuit will require any real crisis management from Twitter. The public has embraced the service and many will feel insulted by TechRadium’s attempt at halting their flow of information, which could very well result in a backlash against the plaintiff.

JB

Jonathan Bernstein
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/