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IP-Based Location Determination Patented

Posted by timothy on from the get-up-get-get-get-down dept.

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."

1 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Prior art by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Can't find one at the moment, but this is definitely not new.

    The priority date of the original filing is back in 1999 so you have to find prior art before that.