PTAB hands win to Snapchat in private messaging inter partes review
In a victory for Snapchat, the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has determined several claims of a business messaging platform’s patent are unpatentable.
The decision, published Friday, August 30 comes after Snap Inc challenged claims 1-3 and 6-8 of a patent (US number 9,313,156 B2) owned by Vaporstream, a company which provides businesses with a secure messaging platform.
The patent in dispute, titled “Electronic message send device handling system and method with separated display and transmission of message content and header information”, relates to an electronic messaging method with reduced traceability.
The patent notes that typically, an electronic message between two people is not private as it may be intercepted by third parties. The challenged claims describe a method to overcome this problem.
In its decision, the board agreed with Snap Inc that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine several methods covered by prior art to reach the same end product as covered by Vaporstream’s patent.
The ruling comes two years after Vaporstrem filed a patent infringement claim at the US District Court for the Central District of California in October 2017, alleging that Snapchat’s instant messaging feature was infringing its patent.
Snap Inc had previously attempted to have the patent invalidated at the district court, but in March 2018, the court said the platform failed to prove that the patents cover an abstract idea ineligible for patent protection.
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