Snapchat owner hit with lawsuit over platform system
Dispute involves three patents that allegedly solved a technical problem over how to create new media content | Snapchat app has millions of users, and is especially favoured by Generation Z.
Snap, the owner of messaging app Snapchat, is facing an infringement lawsuit over a trio of patents that protect a system that creates media content based on electronic data.
Virtual Creative Artists filed the lawsuit at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Wednesday, July 26, alleging the infringement of US patent numbers 9,501,480; 9,477,665, and 10,339,576.
Snap is a US camera and social media company founded in September 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in Santa Monica, California. The company developed technological products and services, most notably Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji.
Snapchat enables its users to adopt various lenses, filters, and stickers—which allows them to customise their photos and videos in a creative way—and remains one of the most popular social media apps among young people aged between 16 and 24.
The company has a market cap or net worth of $21.06 billion as of July 16 this year.
Problem-solving invention
The patents at the heart of the lawsuit share the same title: Revenue-Generating Electronic Multi-Media Exchange and Process of Operating Same.
The invention claimed in the patents relates to the field of creating and distributing media content, and in particular creating media content based upon submissions received on an electronic media exchange.
Visual Creative Artists claims that at the the time of the original invention in 1998, there “was an Internet-centric problem that required a technical solution” over how to “develop a computer system that would allow remote contributors of electronic content to share and collaborate their content to develop new media content”.
The claimed invention, it adds, offered a “unique, unconventional, and specially configured combination of ‘subsystems’ in which to address this problem”.
“Each of these subsystems are configured in a very specific (and not generic), unconventional and non-routine manner to offer the novel and non-obvious claimed invention,” says the complaint.
A sophisticated offering
Citing an example, Visual Creative Artists explains how the patents require an “electronic media submissions database”, which is a subsystem that receives media submissions from Internet users.
This involves a scalable database that must be able to receive, store, and manage multiple petabytes of multimedia data received from users all over the world.
Such a sophisticated database management system cannot operate on a generic computing system, but rather requires specialised hardware and software, says the complaint.
The company contends that Snap has been directly infringing the patents-in-suit by using a computer-based system for its Snapchat website and platform to enable the provision of personalised discovery feeds.
Such feeds show users information relating to who they follow and content they have selected, viewed, subscribed to—or positively rated in the past.
Snap currently describes the operation of its system in the following way: “… go to discover, here you’ll find your friends’ stories, as well as shows, content from publishers, and snaps from creators and the community, personalised for you”.
Visual Creative Artists insists that such a functionality would not be possible without the application of its own patented invention, and is seeking a judgment of infringement alongside damages and costs.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories sent like this straight to your inbox
