Twitter’s new IPA has been embraced wholeheartedly by many tech writers, even though in this case, IPA stands for “innovator’s patent agreement,” and not the more common “India Pale Ale.”
Twitter’s IPA, which the company unveiled Tuesday, is a legal document that seeks to give employees more control over software inventions that they create but that Twitter patents. The document pledges not to use patents for an “offensive” purpose — that is, suing another company unprovoked — without the express permission of the inventor.
Unfortunately, Twitter won’t be capitalizing on its fame to brew its own drink. Sources close to the company told TPM that IPA was chosen because it was a “convenient acronym,” one that wasn’t connected to Twitter.
That’s intergal to the company’s stated strategy of putting its IPA document out into the wild in the hopes that other companies will also adopt it, beginning a new era of armistice in the tech industry, which has been plagued by an increasing wave of costly patent battles.
Twitter sources told TPM that the company might “have a round of IPAs to celebrate” the new document tonight, however.
Twitter, it should be known, does not have any formal patents of its own, but does have a application for at least one, the “pull-to-refresh” feature found on the Twitter app for the iPhone.
As for ambitions to make a refreshing alcoholic beverage, someone at Twitter was homebrewing their own supply at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco when Mashable visited in 2009. The same year, San Francisco’s own 21st Amendment microbrewery did create a “Spring Tweet” limited edition beer. So maybe a Twitter-themed beer isn’t too far fetched, after all.
