Facebook Live Copied Tech from Combat Veteran’s App, Jury Finds in $175 Million Verdict – By Gregory Yee (Los Angeles Times) / Sept 22, 2022
The parent company of Facebook and 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 Afghanistan.
A federal jury in Austin, Texas, deliberated for a day before finding that Meta Platforms Inc. infringed two patents held by Voxer Inc., and awarded Voxer $174.5 million in damages, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
Voxer had accused the Menlo Park, California, social media giant of taking its proprietary streaming technologies and incorporating them into Facebook Live and Instagram Live after a potential collaboration fell through.
Tom Katis, Voxer’s 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 “with the immediacy of live communication and the reliability and convenience of messaging,” according to court documents.
