Childhood Memory Sparks Discovery of Winning Prior Art

Value Delivered

Through strategic research and creative problem-solving, the team uncovered prior art that helped the client avoid nearly $2 million in potential litigation costs. This discovery not only fortified their defense but also reinforced their long-term IP protection and risk management strategy.

Problem Solved

The client needed to identify prior art for a social media aggregator app with a cut-off date of 2009. The app allowed users to log in once and access multiple social media platforms through a single interface. Despite extensive research across patent and non-patent databases, no relevant references were found predating 2009.

Solutions Offered

During a brainstorming session, an unexpected idea emerged—an employee recalled a mobile app from their childhood designed to consolidate multiple applications to save storage space. This memory inspired a new search direction focused on “unified messaging” apps from 2008–2009, developed to optimize phone storage and streamline communication.

This shift led the team to explore early apps like Nimbuzz, Trillian, Fring, and imo, which shared similar functionalities. The breakthrough came with the discovery of Digsby, an app that allowed users to integrate multiple social media accounts within a single platform.

Further investigation into Digsby revealed essential features aligned with the patent—multi-account login and notification display. However, one critical feature remained elusive: customizable notification preferences.

Traditional sources yielded no clear evidence, but the team’s persistence paid off when they found a YouTube product review describing Digsby’s user-controlled notification settings. This video served as the missing link, confirming the presence of the patented feature and successfully establishing the prior art needed for the defense.

Get the full case study to discover how an employee’s childhood memory led to the discovery of winning prior art.