Saturday, September 24, 2022

Meta Faces Huge Damages Worth $175 Million After Losing Its Patent Infringement Lawsuit

A major bill is coming Meta’s way after the firm lost a recent lawsuit linked to patent infringement.

Facebook’s parent firm is not having a great time after being slapped with lawsuit after lawsuit and this time, a Texas judge has ordered the company to grant damages worth $175 million to Voxer. The latter is the name reserved for the developer of Walkie-Talkie. They sent out allegations against the firm for patent infringement and even using the technology on live streams across both the Instagram and Facebook apps.

It was way back in the year 2006 that we witnessed Voxer developing a new strategy to overcome communication issues that were faced by soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. And that’s when the team came up with an innovation that enables transmission through live videos and voice commands. And in the end, we saw the launch of the Walkie-Talkie application in 2011.

The lawsuit shed light on how Voxer’s rights were violated by Meta who was at that time known by the name of Facebook only. They tried to collaborate with Voxer and the firm and hence went about unveiling its latest technology and a patent portfolio for the company. However, both sides failed to reach any form of agreement.

Also, at that time, Voxer felt Meta did not have any live video or voice services and they took the company on as their archrival. Therefore, access to Facebook’s tool called ‘Find Friends’ was also shut down to avoid further competition.

In 2015, we saw the firm launch its Facebook Live and Voxer saw that as a complete infringement of their policies in 2016. The company’s reps tried to reach out to Facebook to discuss the matter and how their services were infringed but no deal was reached by the firm. Instead, the latter went about its launch for Instagram Live soon that same year.

Voxer says it was shocked at Meta’s behavior and how the company was using the same technology by Voxer without any consent, as mentioned in the lawsuit.

But Meta continued to deny all such claims. They released a statement directly to TechCrunch. And now, after being slammed for the behavior, they’re not happy. Moreover, they hope to seek more relief and file an appeal as well.

The news is definitely startling to many who feel Meta really went about in disguise with this and thought it would be able to get away with it. But clearly, that’s not the case.


Read next: Meta In Trouble Again As Facebook Users Sue Firm For Monitoring Their Data
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

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