Defendant
3 cases as defendant.
Company overview. Instagram LLC, commonly known as Instagram, is a photo- and video-sharing social networking service headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (originally under the name Burbn) and was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for roughly $1 billion in cash and stock. Instagram is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META); it does not publish standalone financials and is consolidated into Meta's results. Meta reported approximately $164 billion in revenue in 2024 and employs over 70,000 people globally.
Products / services / operations. Instagram operates a mobile-first social media application and website through which users share photos and short- and long-form video, communicate via direct messaging, and follow public figures and brands. Major product surfaces include the main feed, Stories, Reels, and Instagram Direct messaging, along with commerce and advertising tools. It is an operating company with real products and users — not a patent-holding shell.
Patent-litigation posture. Instagram is a defendant in the company's only tracked U.S. patent case (1 total; 0 as plaintiff). The suit is an infringement action brought by VideoLabs, Inc., a patent-licensing business, against Meta and a group of its subsidiaries. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware rather than a traditionally plaintiff-friendly venue like the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable cases or context. The tracked matter is VideoLabs, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. et al. (D. Del., filed May 24, 2022). Court filings identify Instagram alongside WhatsApp, Facebook Technologies, and Giphy as Meta subsidiaries accused over video streaming and compression features. VideoLabs is a licensing platform that assembled a portfolio of video-technology patents acquired from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Siemens AG, and Panasonic, and asserts them through membership/licensing fees. The court partially dismissed claims on § 101 eligibility grounds in 2024, and the parties resolved the dispute in late 2025.
VideoLabs asserted five patents, including U.S. Patent No. 7,970,059, against Meta and related subsidiaries. Law360 reported in October 2025 that Meta and VideoLabs resolved the dispute.
Related action by BlackBerry against Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, consolidated for pretrial purposes with BlackBerry v. Snap. The narrative lists Federal Circuit appeal 2020-1256 as arising from this consolidated action. The narrative does not fully identify the patents asserted in this case.
BlackBerry sued Facebook and affiliated entities for patent infringement; U.S. 9,349,120 was among the asserted patents. The court found the '120 claims not drawn to an abstract idea, but final disposition as to the '120 Patent was not confirmed.