During the run-up to its initial public offering, Twitter came under fire for not having a large enough patent portfolio, something professional investors like to see when small companies go up against larger competitors. That weakness was highlighted when Twitter was notified by IBM in November that it infringed on several patents related to interactive services that IBM was granted in the 1990s. While Twitter at first said it planned to fight the case, it has instead decided to play ball with the dysfunctional patent system by buying 900 patents from IBM and signing a cross-licensing deal with the computing giant.
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