Copyright/patent and Intellectual Property laws?

[Star]

Hi I have a question, in Twitter and Instagram, they both use the method of 'following' or 'followers', showing the number of people you are following and ones following you. Does that mean Instagram breached Twitter's patent or vice versa? If I start a social networking site and had that with 'following' or 'followers', would that be breaching anything? Or is there an exception for basic things, e.g., 'gallery', 'likes', 'followers'?

Thank you.

[Yeti]

If you're really starting a social networking site, you should likely be in touch with an attorney who can review what you're doing and look up things like related patents.

It's doubtful that simply having "followers" is patented, especially as it's a fairly basic function without any other realistic alternative. There might be some specific method or technique one site uses that's patented, but it would be behind the scenes.

[bcnu]

The "idea" of having followers has been around since there were first leaders or scholars. The only thing a patent does is allow someone to prevent others from making the same INVENTION. In order to know what the invention is, you would need to read the patent (if there is one) and interpret the "claims" of the owners to their "property" rights in the invention. You would then either get a license from them to do "the same thing" or figure out a new way to "do the same thing", but in a way that is not described in their claims or an obvious equivalent. This is called 'engineering around the claims' and is perfectly legal.