Snap acquires Mobli's 'Geofilters' patent for $7.7 million

Snapchat's parent company, Snap has reportedly acquired Mobli’s 'Geofilters' patent for $7.7 million. Mobli is photo-sharing network, which also happens to be Instagram's rival.

Citing sources and a confidential email sent by Mobli, to its shareholders, TechCrunch report says that Moshe Hogeg, who co-founded Mobli, sold its Geofilters patent to Snap this month for $7.7 million, "the highest amount paid for a patent from the Israeli tech industry."

The most expensive patent acquisition deal in Israel till date was a $2.7 million patent to do with Google Maps.

Notably, Snap latest acquisition is pretty crucial for the company. According to Snap’s S-1 filing for its IPO, of the $400 million in revenues the company has, $360 million is made by selling “Geofilters,” or photo filters based on location, which advertisers can buy.

Mobli, which was launched six years ago, patented the idea of Geo-photo filters in 2012. The patent - US#20160373805, US#9459778 - was named Methods and Systems of providing visual content editing functions and covered server-side filters,meaning the filter was coming from the server instead of from inside the app, which means the app itself doesn’t have to be updated every time there is a new Geo-photo filter to push.