BlackBerry sues Snapchat parent Snap, claiming patent infringement

BlackBerry has recently made it known that it considers suing for patent infringement to be a 'profit center.' Actually, this seems to have been the case going back a few years. For example, who can forget the company's victorious defense of its physical QWERTY keyboard when it won a judgment of $860,600 back in 2015 from Typo. The latter firm sold a case for the iPhone that doubled as a physical keyboard for the device and the design, created by American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, infringed on a BlackBerry patent. After Typo violated a court order not to sell the infringing case, BlackBerry successfully took Typo to court.

In February 2017, BlackBerry sued Nokia, and last month the company went after Facebook and two of its holdings, WhatsApp and Instagram. And today, we've learned that BlackBerry has filed a patent infringement suit against Snapchat parent Snap. It makes sense really; if you believe that Instagram is using your intellectual property without obtaining a license, odds are that Snapchat is too. Well, that's our Story, and we're sticking to it.

Anyway, BlackBerry is claiming that Snap infringed on seven of its patents including:

• 8,209,634 - Previewing a new event on a small screen device
• 8,301,713 - Handheld electronic device and associated method providing time data in a messaging environment
• 7,970,849 - Handheld electronic device and associated method providing time data in a messaging environment
• 8,825,084 - System and method for determining action spot locations relative to the location of a mobile device
• 8,326,327 - System and method for determining action spot locations relative to the location of a mobile device
• 8,296,351 - System and method for pushing information to a mobile device
• 8,676,929 - System and method for pushing information to a mobile device

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Check out the filing below. It compares illustrations from BlackBerry's patents and actual screenshots taken from Snapchat. Keep in mind that this is just BlackBerry's side of the story and Snap's lawyers will no doubt mount a vigorous defense.

source: Scribd
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