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1 June 2021PatentsAlex Baldwin

Facebook beats push-to-talk complaint, invalidates patent

Facebook has beaten patent infringement claims levied at its Facebook Live feature and successfully invalidated its opponents patent, according to a ruling handed down by the England and Wales High Court.

Voxer initially accused the social network’s live broadcasting feature of infringing its “push-to-talk” telecom patent. Facebook denied the infringement and sought to invalidate the patent at the High Court, Voxer sought to counterclaim for infringement.

Justice Sir Colin Birss ruled that the Voxer patent was not infringed by any of Facebook’s live broadcast features, and found that the patent was invalid for obviousness over a 2006 patent cited by Facebook in the proceedings, despite amendments to the patent also being granted.

The 2006 ‘Munje’ patent covers “Methods and apparatus for automatically recording Push-To-Talk (PTT) Voice communications for replay”. Sir Birss ruled that Claims 1 and 5 of the Voxer patent are obvious over Munje.

Additionally, Birss said that he was “not persuaded” of the inventiveness of Claim 10 of Voxer’s patent, which covered “queuing messages for progressive transmission”.

Facebook also argued that Voxer’s patent was obvious over a Qualcomm patent application which covered archiving session data in a wireless communications network—WO 2006/121550 or the ‘Atarius’ patent. However, Birss said that “[Voxers] claims are novel, are not obvious... nor are they insufficient” over Atarius.

Facebook was represented by Mark Vanhegan QC and Jaani Riordan at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Voxer by Brian Nicholson QC and Christopher Hall at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan UK.

Hearings took place on April 12, 13 and 15, with the final approved judgment handed down on May 26, 2021.

Patent claims

Voxer first filed its patent on April 29 2008, claiming priority from a series of US filings dating from June 2007. The patent was later granted in 2007.

The invention covers two conversation ‘modes’, a “near-synchronous” live conversation and “a series of back and forth time-delayed transmissions”, which it refers to as “time-shifted mode”, as well as the ability to transition seamlessly between the two.

The Delaware company amended claims of the patent twice prior to High Court proceedings. The final set of amendments proposed on February 25 were granted by Birss.

Proceedings at the High Court focused mainly on the validity of claim 1 of Voxer’s patent, with claim 5 and amended claims 2, 3, 4 and 10 also in dispute.

Voxer contended that the patent was infringed by Facebook Live offered via the website and through the Facebook and Instagram iOS apps.

It had also originally claimed infringement by the feature on the Android version of the apps, but then withdrew the accusation following clarification of how the Android apps worked shortly before trial.

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