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I won't pretend to understand how patents work, or comment on the general absurdity of the claim overall, but it did strike me as peculiar that Facebook would a

• scoot 12y ago
  (And bravo on the troll-face image! The irony will not be lost should this patent be granted and FB attempt to assert it...)
• DSMan195276 12y ago
  To be fair, they didn't attempt to claim to invent the 'composite image'. While there is a picture of a composite image and it is mentioned in the description, nothing about composite images is in the claims. The claims themselves seem to be specifically about using a text identifier on a social-network messaging system to display in-line images. The composite image figure is simply an example of multiple in-line images used together in a single message. This is also just an application, so there's no guarantee the claims will stay the same before it is accepted (If it ever is) That said, I'm not a patent lawyer so take that with as much salt as you want.