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IP-Based Location Determination Patented
little1973 writes "Digital Envoy recived patent 6,757,740 for determining, collecting and using geographic locations of Internet users. I didn't know a patent could be obtained for a simple traceroute and some lookups in a DB." The patent talks about a bit more than this (such as assigning confidence levels to bits of the looked-up information), but the long list of referenced previous patents reminds me of the saying "If you copy one person, it's plagiarism; if you copy a dozen, it's research."
I know web-sites having been doing this long ago. Can't find one at the moment, but this is definitely not new.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
In Soviet Rusia, we patent YOU!
I traced a spammer to his exact location using the information provided in the database:
1060 W. Addison St.
Chicago, Illinois
I've had a IP to location tool on my personal web site for over a year - it uses one of the more simpler ways of determining location (use the Perl Module Geo::IPfree ... looks like the 0.1 release for that was 2002) so does this mean that my use of that module means I'm in violation of the patent ... or is the Perl Module itself in violation?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
A system collects the geographic information and allows web sites or other entities to request the geographic location of their visitors. The database of geographic locations may be stored in a central location or, alternatively, may be at least partially located at the web site.
Sounds like a patent on keeping geographical IP addresses in a database. These folks are truly great "inventors". Thanks to the PO for promoting the useful arts and sciences. Without such exclusive rights, nothing would get invented.
Maybe this will inhibit entities violating the basic tenets of the Internet by refusing to serve based on location. And if it doesn't, at least I'll have the consolation that it's costing them.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
... on a mission from God. Be nice to the Cubbies, they don't stand a chance.
There's some guy who has that link in his sig, it links to his own geo-location thingo. Where is he when you need him?
There were at least two systems set up that did this beforehand: IP2Geo and Net2Geo. I did all sorts of research on this because I'm very close to releasing an application that looks up geographic information based upon IP.
I believe for prior art to be accepted as such it has to be documented in a place that someone researching the idea would look. Even if it's been on your website since the first browser came out it isn't prior art unless it was also published in some trade journal for internet technologies. Yes, I know, it sucks bigtime. Especially, when you know that the technology is really not novel, and has been in common use for a long time. The fact that 10 years ago I would look at IP addresses and sometime know (from memory) which country they were in doesn't seem to stop these idiots from gettins patents granted by other idiots.
Talk to the person who wrote the module, and ask him/her where they got the idea for the module... There may be prior art there yet! The module may just be the formalization of an old idea.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The only plag^H^H^H^Hresearch in this case, however, is to figure out how to patent stuff with lots of obvious prior art.
...anyone trying to determine anything relating to the internet and IP addresses, would have to notice there are things called DNS and search engines activated by keyword search algorithyms. This, a clever lawyer might say, is "publication in a peer journal", if it can be proven that the search terms would lead to the prior art site readily. If it's published on the web, it's published. If it's easily found, it's easily found. The web contains your peers as a subset of everyone. You have to search in a brticks and mortar library, either by actually looking here and there, or using a card catalog, or a microfoche catalog and slides, and so forth. Searching is searching.
Need to bust these bogus patents. Need to bust up IP patents in general, take it back to tangibles only.
Interesting trivia, when was the first non tangible patent issued, and what was it, and why was it issued?
I don't know, just wondering.
"Visualizing the Global Topology of the MBone", Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, pp. 85-92, Munzner, Hoffman, Claffy, Fenner
I am not sure what exactly is granted/covered by this patent, but there were at least two such "Databases" I know of. One is Quova (in Mountain View, CA), and the other was (may be still is) Privaseek. Both included confidence levels. They also included US census bureau classifications of the locality, DMA code etc.
Quova even had an on-line service: you redirect the visitor to Quova, and Quova would redirect back to you with all GEO location information stuffed in.
...but hasn't this been a feature of most Web log analyzers for at least the last decade?