BlackBerry also sues Snapchat maker after WhatsApp

BlackBerry has sued Snap, the company behind Snapchat. The indictment comes a month after the Canadian company sued WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram for patent infringement.

BlackBerry accuses Snap of, among other things, copying the display of contacts on a map and the display of messages in a list, according to the indictment that Bloomberg news agency first published. It concerns a total of seven patents, of which BlackBerry also uses two in the complaint against Facebook.

Specifically, these include displaying contact avatars on a map, timestamps in chats, displaying new messages in a separate list, and displaying advertisements. According to BlackBerry, Snapchat copied those interface elements without licensing the Canadian company’s patents.

BlackBerry was the world leader in smartphone chatting ten years ago through BlackBerry Messenger. For a long time, BBM was a feature that only worked on BlackBerrys, even when users of other smartphones started using WhatsApp, WeChat, Kik Messenger and Facebook Messenger, among others. Snap has not yet responded to the charges.