Snapchat facing patent lawsuit over geofilters
Social networking app Snapchat has been targeted in a patent infringement lawsuit by Canadian company Investel Capital Corporation, in a case surrounding geofilters.
Investel filed its lawsuit at the Federal Court of Canada on Tuesday, August 23.
Investel is an investment fund company specialising in the acquisition of telecommunications companies.
Snapchat, a social network which allows users to send photographs that appear for a limited amount of time, was founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown.
According to Snapchat, a geofilters "location based overlays that users can apply to their Snaps", users can now submit their own geofilter artwork to Snapchat.
The patent in suit, Canadian number 2,887,596, was awarded to Investel subsidiary Teliphone Navigata-Westel Communication in 2015.
The patent covers an advertising system that allows users to brand their own social media content with user-related advertising information.
According to the complaint, Snapchat has infringed the ‘596 patent through its geofilter system, which uses the location of social media users in order to provide on-demand insertion of external content.
It is seeking injunctive relief prohibiting Snapchat from continuing to infringe the patent, plus costs of more than $50,000.
Lawry Trevor-Deutsch, managing partner at Investel, said: “We will not stand by and permit other companies or organisations, including Snapchat, to exploit our proprietary technology.
“This suit reflects our continued commitment to protect our investments by vigorously pursuing the unauthorised and unlicensed use of our intellectual property.”
