As Dustin Curtis was tipped to, Twitter patented Pull to Refresh.

And with it come to usual cries for how fucked the patent system is. Twitter was fast to state they’re not going to enforce it, but episodes like Andy Baio’s show that circumstances change, regardless of the initial intentions when the patent application was filed.

The way I see it, Twitter may have indeed filed the patent in a defensive move. And with the “prior arts” check at USPTO as bad as it is, it probably is the only way to ensure nobody else patents it and in the process sues Twitter for using it. This is a real dilemma, which comes with the uncertainty the current US patent regime has established.

If that are indeed Twitter’s intentions, and a lot of other companies’ intentions at the moment that they file for patents we need a way of ensuring those patents don’t get “weaponized” when business circumstances change. In short, we need to establish a way that Twitter can’t use the patent it filed to prevent others from weaponizing it in turn ends up suing others for ”infringing on their IP.”

Taking a lead from Dave Winer, one solution could be to put those patents in escrow, and doing so publicly. This would solve both problems. Twitter would be protected, because nobody else could patent the invention, and third party developers could rely on Twitter’s promise not to weaponize the patent, because they couldn’t.

Call it a “Patent Commons” if you will…

IANAL, and I’m sure there’s a LOT of holes in this idea. If so, please point them out. I’m tired of hearing: “the patent system is screwed up, but there’s nothing we can do.”

Update: As I’ve just read on kottke.org it’s not yet a patent, but a patent application.

Indeed, by what right do Disney and the BBC get to adapt Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and Sherlock without paying the descendants of Lewis Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, and Arthur Conan Doyle?

Beautiful satire over at the Telegraph.

Dustin Curtis is weighing in on the Address Book issue which hit Path yesterday:

[…] fledgling app developers do everything they can to increase their chances. Because Apple provides extremely easy access to address book data, the pro — that is, using the data to improve user experience, increase virality and growth, etc. — outweighs the con. To stay on equal footing, larger apps, like Yelp, Facebook, and Foursquare, have to follow along.

I fully believe this issue is a failure of Apple and a breach of trust by Apple, not by app developers. The expectation of Address Book privacy is obvious[.]

Are you kidding me?

Just because Apple doesn’t expressly forbid, by technical means or App Store policy, that this data should not be used, it’s a free-for-all? I don’t buy this “If everybody else is doing it, we should as well do it also.” That’s exactly the lameness that is the “It’s current industry standard”–defense. That doesn’t count.

Yes, Apple should have restricted access to this data. They did not, and that’s bad. This does not, however, absolve any app developer that uses this.

I did a quick survey of 15 developers of popular iOS apps, and 13 of them told me they have a contacts database with millons of records. One company’s database has Mark Zuckerberg’s cell phone number, Larry Ellison’s home phone number and Bill Gates’ cell phone number.

Shouldn’t that be worrying?

Meanwhile, Path announced they deleted all harvested contact information.

Arun Thampi with an interesting observation:

I started to observe the various API calls made to Path’s servers from the iPhone app. It all seemed harmless enough until I observed a POST request to https://api.path.com/3/contacts/add.

Upon inspecting closer, I noticed that my entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path.

Dave Morin is reacting in the comments:

We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and effeciently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.

We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval.

While I welcome the addition of Opt-Out functionality, not being notified, never mind asked about this kind of data disclosure leaves a bitter taste. Address books are very intimate and confidential data sets.

Arguing that:

This is currently the industry best practice.

only goes on to show how corrupting facebooks practices have been to the industry as a whole.

Google’s feature-creep is creeping me out.

I’ve been wondering for a while what it is that makes me increasingly uncomfortable in my reliance on Google. Dave puts his finger on it.