{"id":1657869,"date":"2022-09-26T07:37:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1657869"},"modified":"2022-09-26T07:37:25","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:37:25","slug":"jury-finds-facebook-live-copied-tech-from-war-vets-app-in-175-million-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/jury-finds-facebook-live-copied-tech-from-war-vets-app-in-175-million-verdict\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury Finds Facebook Live Copied Tech From War Vet&#8217;s App in $175 Million Verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fjury-finds-facebook-live-copied-tech-from-war-vets-app-in-175-million-verdict%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1657869&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The parent company of\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and Instagram was ordered to pay nearly $175 million for violating patents held by the maker of a push-to-talk app founded by a former Green Beret who had sought to solve battlefield communications problems he encountered in\u00a0Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>A federal jury in\u00a0Austin, Texas, deliberated for a day before finding that\u00a0Meta Platforms Inc.\u00a0infringed two patents held by\u00a0Voxer Inc., and awarded Voxer $174.5 million in damages, according to court documents filed Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Voxer had accused the\u00a0Menlo Park, Calif., social media giant of taking its proprietary streaming technologies and incorporating them into\u00a0Facebook\u00a0Live and Instagram Live after a potential collaboration fell through.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Katis, Voxer\u2019s co-founder and chief executive until 2015, had been inspired by his battlefield experiences to find new technology that could enable transmission of voice and video communications \u201cwith the immediacy of live communication and the reliability and convenience of messaging,\u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n<p>He had reenlisted after 9\/11 and was serving as a communications sergeant with the Army Special Forces in 2003 when his unit was ambushed and he faced the shortcomings of existing systems while trying to coordinate medevacs and reinforcements, according to Voxer\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n<p>Voxer launched the Voxer Walkie Talkie app in 2011, and\u00a0Facebook\u00a0soon approached the company about a potential collaboration, court documents stated.<\/p>\n<p>By\u00a0February 2012, Voxer had shared its patent portfolio and proprietary technology with\u00a0Facebook, but when early meetings failed to result in an agreement, \u201d\u00a0Facebook\u00a0identified Voxer as a competitor although\u00a0Facebook\u00a0had no live video or voice product at the time,\u201d the documents stated.<\/p>\n<p>The social media giant then revoked Voxer\u2019s access \u201cto key components of the\u00a0Facebook\u00a0platform,\u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n<p>The jury found that both\u00a0Facebook\u00a0Live, launched in 2015, and Instagram Live, launched in 2016, \u201cincorporate Voxer\u2019s technologies\u201d and infringed two Voxer patents.<\/p>\n<p>The first involves a system that progressively transmits streaming media over a network \u201cas the streaming media is created and persistently stored, therefore enabling hybrid digital communications that can be both real-time and time-shifted; and by delivering video communication without first establishing an end-to-end connection over the network between the sender and receiver.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The second also involves transmission of streaming media, \u201cby generating two or more degraded versions of a streaming video message and transmitting an appropriate degraded version to each recipient; and by trans-coding the video media of a video message,\u201d according to the documents.<\/p>\n<p>In early 2016, Voxer met with senior\u00a0Facebook\u00a0executives and sent a statement that outlined the app\u2019s patent portfolio \u201cand specifically referenced the patent families\u201d of all of the patents Meta would be accused of infringing, according to court documents.<\/p>\n<p>Katis had \u201ca chance meeting\u201d with a\u00a0Facebook\u00a0Live senior product manager in late\u00a0February 2016\u00a0and raised the issue of the platform\u2019s patent infringement, encouraging the product manager to follow up with the senior\u00a0Facebook\u00a0executives, the documents stated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201d\u00a0Facebook\u00a0has prioritized live video messaging since the launch of\u00a0Facebook\u00a0Live and Instagram Live, with one report identifying\u00a0Facebook\u00a0Live as\u00a0Facebook\u2019s \u2018top priority,&#8217;\u201d according to the documents.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement to The\u00a0Times, a Meta spokesperson disputed the claims, saying the company believes that evidence presented at trial showed that Meta did not infringe Voxer\u2019s patents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe intend to seek further relief, including filing an appeal,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>An attorney for Meta referred a request for a statement to the company.<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys for Voxer said that the company \u201chas an interesting history with\u00a0Facebook\u201d and that the trial provided a forum for each side to air its grievances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201d\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and Instagram put up a good fight,\u201d said attorneys\u00a0Robert Stone,\u00a0Mike Powell\u00a0and Sam Stake.<\/p>\n<p>In closing statements, Voxer\u2019s attorneys took aim at Meta. \u201cThe Voxer patented method does not include the step of big brother-type censorship because Voxer never considered using its live messaging platform to inhibit free speech,\u201d they said. \u201cRather, Voxer sought to promote free speech through its game-changing live messaging inventions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a92022 Los Angeles Times. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Distributed by\u00a0Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The parent company of\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and Instagram was ordered to pay nearly $175 million for violating patents held by the maker of a push-to-talk app founded by a former Green Beret who<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1657871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1657869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1657869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1657871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1657869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1657869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1657869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}