TechRadium, based out of Sugar Land, Texas, filed a patent infringement complaint this Tuesday against Twitter, Inc., the company that owns the insanely popular micro-blogging/social networking site that  allows users to relay short bursts of information, aka “Tweets”, in 140 characters or less.

“In its complaint against Twitter, TechRadium alleges Twitter infringes upon those patents by offering for sale and use TechRadium’s patented technology without licenses to do so.”

“Also in its complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, TechRadium seeks economic damages and a permanent injunction barring Twitter from infringing on its patents.”

TechRadium initiated the complaint after they learned that Twitter was going to be used by municipal governments for public emergency alerts.  TechRadium markets it’s technologies to municipal governments for emergency alerts, and they patented that technology.

TechRadium is also involved in another patent litigation filed against Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard Inc., which makes software for school districts to communicate with students parents.

The firm that represents TechRadium was focusing on this litigation, a focus that  delayed the Twitter allegations until Tuesday.

Check out the full story here: Twitter Sued on Patent Infringement Allegations

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The USMC has banned Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and other similar social networking sites citing a potential security risk. The ban is effective on these sites while Marines are at work, using the Corps’ equipment.  It does not effect Marines’ private use on personal computers outside of their jobs.

“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday.

“The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

The ban will last a year as of right now, coming after a warning in July that all web 2.0 sites could  cause network security issues. All types of viruses pass from user to user on these sites.

“The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users,” a Stratcom source told Wired.com.

“Yet many within the Pentagon’s highest ranks find value in the Web 2.0 tools. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The Department of Defense is getting ready to unveil a new home page, packed with social media tools. The Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook. Top generals now blog from the battlefield.”

It should be interesting to see how this pans out. The Pentagon even has a newly-appointed social media czar, Price Floyd.

“What we can’t do is let security concerns trump doing business. We have to do business… We need to be everywhere men and women in uniform are and the public is. If that’s MySpace and YouTube, that’s where we need to be, too,” Floyd said.

Check out the original article: Marines ban Twitter, Facebook, other sites

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Tony La Russa, the much-famed baseball manger, has dropped his high-profile lawsuit against Twitter. Tony was suing Twitter over a short-tempered impersonator using his name on the micro-blogging site.

“In a June 26 court filing (pdf), La Russa’s lawyer, Gregory McCoy, wrote that his client was dismissing the case, adding that “No payment was made by Twitter to La Russa in exchange for this dismissal.” According to a person familiar with the case, there was no settlement of any kind.”

“In what appeared to be the first legal challenge to the popular San Francisco startup, La Russa sued Twitter on May 6, alleging that an unknown person had been tastelessly using his name and image, tweeting from an account named “TonyLaRussa.” Besides claiming that La Russa’s identity had been hijacked, the suit asserted that Twitter was damaging La Russa’s trademark rights to his nationally famous name.”

Legal eagles were skeptical of the case stating that Twitter could not be held liable since Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives websites immunity from what their users post online.

Take a look at the full story about Baseball Manager LaRussa Pulling his Twitter Suit.

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