Twitter is getting the patent of “Pull-to-refresh”. This sounds scary since future apps may not be able to use such feature since it is now patented. Twitter has introduced the Innovator’s Patent Agreement which won’t use the patent as a weapon.

Twitter writes the following in the blog,

…patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

That means if other apps keep using “Pull-to-refresh” without paying any money to Twitter, they won’t get sued. The best thing is that if Twitter sold the patents to others, other company cannot weaponize the patents as well.

[via Cult Of Mac]