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Wi-Fi Redirect Gateway Patent for Hotspots
Glenn Fleishman writes "Over at WiFiNetNews.com, we just broke the story that Nomadix was issued a patent covering hotspot gateway page redirection. Nomadix makes hardware and software for the hotspot industry, and this patent would cover redirection used by community networking portals (like NoCat), sponsored free networks (like NewburyOpen.Net), and fee networks (like Wayport, T-Mobile HotSpot, and Cometa). It's unclear what terms Nomadix wants for a license, but this patent seems to take a standard way of doing business and put it under fee -- although Nomadix may have been the first firm to employ this method for proxy URL redirection."
If you provide wireless over a large area, you don't mind perhaps putting up small signs to advertise that it's available in this area, but you don't want to have to put all the instructions, terms of use, etc up there. That's a lot of text.
We aren't talking about businesses who's employees all already know this stuff. We're talking about universities, hotspots in hotels and airports, etc. Public hotspots, where users have to read a terms of use agreement and instructions before continuing, and who may not be the least bit familiar with the necessary steps.
A lot of these sorts of people do this now. I can't remember where I got the idea for this myself, but I doubt I read it off of their patent application.
Sadly, once a patent is gotten, it tends to take a life of it's own because of investor pressures. Patents do not help the honest littel inventor in the back yard (99% of the time) - I wish we could just get rid of them.
Yet, patents are something we just can't get rid of. Think of the medicine industry. To get a new drug, they have to do lots of research and testing... and sometimes the tests end in a failure which means all the money spent on the project is lost, it's a dud. When a working pill is invented, it might take only pennies to make the actual pill, but the research company has got to be paid for its effort. That's where the patent protection comes in, it allows the company to charge an inflated price for a specified number of years in order to recoop that investment... after which time the buzzer sounds and the generics rush in and the price plumets to be in line with the cost of the pill itself and not the discovery of the pill.
How long that protection lasts, and what's enough of an advance to qualify for protection are both points for debate, but we can't exactly throw out patents all together if we want research to go forward...