While the internet was losing its collective shit over the announcement of the iPhone 6, Snapchat‘s founders very quietly announced that they had settled a big lawsuit out of court, paying an undisclosed sum to their former fraternity brother Reggie Brown.
The Verge report that Brown, who is basically a one-man Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, claimed that he invented the app’s trademark disappearing messages – aka, the whole reason behind its amazing popularity.
While Snapchat were probably hoping and praying his suit would disappear after six to eight seconds (OH SNAP…CHAT) it did not. In a pretty damning statement released overnight, the company owned up to everything:
“Reggie Brown originally came up with the idea of creating an application for sending disappearing picture messages while he was a student at Stanford University. He then collaborated with Spiegel and Murphy on the development of Snapchat during its early and most formative days.”
The statement was released at the exact moment Apple began its big press conference, probably in hopes that it would disappear under a tsunami of onanistic iPhone 6 blog posts, but it was not to be.
Brown’s lawyers previously said they were hoping to get up to a third of the billion dollar company in their settlement, so the app’s ousted co-founder is probably a very happy man right now.
One can only imagine the Aaron Sorkin-penned screenplay to come, complete with a thundering, five-minute soliloquy about how Snapchat has fundamentally changed the way we show our penises to people.
Photo: Timothy A Clary via Getty Images
