Microsoft Seeks Latitude/Longitude Patent

theodp writes "Q. What does Microsoft feel is unpatentable? A. Apparently nothing! On Thursday, the USPTO published Microsoft's patent application for the Compact text encoding of latitude/longitude coordinates, in which the software giant explains how a floating-point number can also be represented as a less-precise integer that's displayed in base-30 notation!" If ever I have seen a silly patent, this is it.

Comments

Re:On the bright side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd. I always thought of them as creating some patents on the offensive side against open source software.

Bogus patent

[yotto]

I'm usually pretty lenient about what I consider a good patent, but this one seems dumb. It's not even an optimal way to do it. They're just using a fairly cheesy form of compression to make a string shorter.

So, they remove the ability for a human to tell what the lat/long is by inspecting the string, but compress the string suboptimally? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Isn't this math?

[ddewey]

What happened to not being able to patent a mathematical formula? Isn't something like this basically just a math trick?

Re:Isn't this math?

[ddewey]

Numbers are not supposed to be patentable either. US Patent 5373560 was registered by a member of the League for Programming Freedom in order to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain a frivolous software patent.

As Well, M$ is Not Stupid

[reporter]

Why would anyone want to do base-30 mathematics? I hazard a guess that non-binary (i.e. not base-2) computational devices may exist in the distant future. Consider the quantum computer. Perhaps, a physicist can weigh in on this matter. Is the number of states in a quantum computer always a power of 2?

Although M$ churns out mundane but fairly good software as the main line of business, this company has a huge R&D budget, and the central research laboratory at M$ is the equivalent of the old Bell Laboratory. I suspect that the M$ laboratory is not confined to only software research. There is likely small, upstart efforts exploring other technologies.

Certainly, X-Box took me by surprise as, up to its debut, I had always thought of M$ as a software company.

May be, there is something to the warning: "Resistance [in any technology] is future. You will be assimilated."

Prior art

[smalgin]

At least one part of this encoding method - converting floating-point to non-negative integers - looks like prior art.
For instance, ESRI does this for their spatial database (SDE):
URL is here.

And most likely it was known even before...

Re:On the bright side...

[USCG]

Of course, if there were no software patents, then Microsoft wouldn't need to do this.

Don't be a fool

[johannesg]

Ahh, so Microsoft is NOT going to use patents against the perceived open source threat because... Why exactly? Just because they haven't used patents as a weapon yet, doesn't mean they won't in the future.

Don't you find it more believable that they are simply waiting for software patents to be established world wide, after which they'll take out all the major open source applications? I.e. Samba, Apache, Open Office, Mozilla, maybe gcc, etc.

Re:Don't be a fool

[TheViciousOverWind]

I have this theory, that all these really silly patents won't be used in court, but used for the Microsoft "Get the facts" campaign...

What I mean is that this patent will probably never ever end up in court, but it will most certainly end up in a "Linux violates 953292493294 patents" statistic.

Re:Don't be a fool

[tambo]

I would like to know of a single instance where a patented "truly useful novel algorthim" was a boon for the software industry.

Okay - RSA encryption. This novel encryption method is the mathematical basis for most encrypted web browser communication. Without such a technique, most of e-commerce would be untenable - either the encryption mechanism would be prohibitively cumbersome, or it would be riddled with holes.

This algorithm wasn't created in the vacuum of academia. It was developed as a way of allowing easy, encrypted communication among businesses. Without a business incentive to develop it - i.e., if other companies had been permitted to just steal the technology after it was created - no one would have created it.

So what happened once it was patented? Did the company take on the Darth-Vader-esque visage that most Slashdotters imagine? No, it had the good business judgment to promote RSA across the board, and to reap a reasonable profit through licensing to big companies like Verisign. The industry didn't grind to a halt.

And what would have happened without a strong, business-savvy proponent of RSA? Internet technology in general is a hideous swamp of competing standards and compatibility issues. Ask any web developer how much time they spend on IE/Firefox/Netscape/Opera compatibility issues, or on Java version compatibility, or on security issues between or among various technologies and standards. It's insanity. The explosion of web development has occurred not because of these myriad and disparate technologies, in spite of them.

Yet, in the midst of this sea of chaos, encryption technology just magically seems to work - automatically, unobtrusively, without a security update every 25 seconds. That technology works. I assert that this is because we gave one company some breathing room to develop it.

- David Stein

Re:Don't be a fool

[Master of Transhuman]

"The downside to this is that suppressed inventions will usually be rediscovered, by someone who's not in the same position and who opts to take a different route."

Which is exactly why software patents are a state means of creating monopolies and are thus NOT beneficial to the advancement of the species.

The bottom-line professed concept of IP is that no one will innovate without the chance to make monopoly levels of profit. The unstated - and sometimes stated - assumption is also that if there is no monopoly, that there will be NO profit and thus no innovation. This has never been proven or even demonstrated. Logically, practically and historically, it is also completely ridiculous. Profit is profit. And you can make adequate profit in a wide-open market by competing on both new technology and quality service, better marketing, better financial backing, and a host of other factors that contribute to or diminish business success. Innovation is a primary requirement, but not the only one.

You do have to remember that in a wide-open free market, profit tends to quickly diminish to the general rate of return. Therefore the proper means of competing in a free market is to get to market quickly with a superior product, price it to sell fast, make your money fast, and get on with the next product.

The overall effect of an economy based on this principle is RAPID technological advancement which is the primary benefit of the exercise for the species.

Any attempt to SLOW this process by creating artificial monopolies by law inhibits this benefit.

ALL IP law is detrimental to the advancement of the species. Period.

Re:Don't be a fool

[fymidos]

The RSA patent should never have been accepted, for many reasons (prior act, broad claims, plain mathematics, to name a few) , and i fail to understand your argument that the patent itself helped the industry.

You can read about the patent and its problems in this nice article in cyberlaw . I would like to add a few things though, regarding the industry reaction to the patent.

In '95 computers were already fast enough to handle secure-only communications, but the existence of this particular patent was a big problem for most of the new and small web companies (and users). And make no mistake, RSA really enforced this patent, they didn't play Mr. nice guy, if that is what you thought. So the majority of web sites, did not serve encrypted pages, the majority of emails are not encrypted (even today), and most of electronic devices have no such support.

To be fair, the patent did create a new market: a few companies selling "security" profited from this. RSA too. The industry as a whole didn't.

Internet naturally did not die from this patent (as the patent was not broad enough to cover non-secure communication as well) , but online security definetely took a major hit.

Re:Don't be a fool

[E_elven]

On the other hand...if I, entirely on my own and without knowledge or information of the patented entity, discover the exact same thing and am prevented from using it, well, that's pretty tyrannic, as well, no?

Re:Don't be a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Software isn't a business. Apparently you know about hammers and so in your world, everything is a nail. Software is literature. It's a story which tells a computer how to act. Like a well-written essay, there is an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. There is no 'business' in it at all. Further, a lot of really good software (the best software) isn't used for 'business' at all. It's used for science and research. Using computers for mere business sullies computers. Business people should be forced back to pencil and paper. Using advanced technology like computers, for something as useless as business is quite stuipid -much like attaching a hay wagon to a high performance aircraft. Computers drag business around all day, but never are allowed to achieve their potential, because of the stupid hay wagon (business). Even worse, business people are highly (shockingly) non-technical, and put useless applications like spreadsheets on them. While possible to dumb down a computer in this way, you cripple it's performance. The machines ability to reason --the inherent intellect it's designers put into it-- are wasted on ty-coons who try to out smart it (and waste it's potential). Much like technical people working for a business, their potential is 99.99999% wasted, because the people in charge (the stuipd business only people), see them as order-takers instead of solution providers. The only joy I see, is that in the world of outsourcing, intelligent overseas companies will quit treating IT people as mere servants to the "oh so mighty business elite" and use them as solution providers rather than order takers. At that point, the company will flourish, take over it's parent, and the stupid business people with their ignorant ways will find themselves outsourced. What is more bizarre, is those stupid business people take no training in (IT) or any other specific business, but in "Business in General". Those same two-faced individuals cannot accept that someone trained in 'computers' can learn about the specific technology when they get to the business. Instead they insist on very specific training in their specific business --something they themselves are unwilling to do. Two faced bastards!

I think there's prior art

[Jugalator]

First, they're obviously not trying to patent the coordinate system like the article title suggests in all its sensational style.

Second, I think there's prior art possibly in the universe simulator Celestia which supports URL encoding of coordinates (I don't know if it's uses the lat/long system though, that's why I'm bit unsure), and there definitely seem to be prior art in NASA's World Wind application. It uses a compact Lat/Long => URL encoding scheme as follows:

worldwind://goto/world=Earth&lat=48.5&lon=15&view= 0.21

Re:Is it entirely MS's fault?

[tambo]

If my memory serves, both the USPTO and the EPO are receiving money for each granted patent as their funding. Hence, neither patent office is very eager to reject any application.

Nonsense.

You are correct in asserting that the USPTO makes money from issance - as per their fee schedule, they get $300 (plus extra fees for various things like multiple independent claims) when the app is filed, and $1,400 when it issues.

But the examiners - the people who make the allow-vs-reject decision - aren't responsible for the fiscal well-being of the USPTO. Were that the case, virtually every application would slide through to issuance with barely any examination. We'd be back to the patent registration scheme of the early 1800's, where you got a patent simply by filling out the right paperwork.

We don't have that system - in name or in practice. The examiners do a hell of a lot of rejecting, with backing references to other patents, journal articles, etc. They don't have the resources for an exhaustive search - but the typical application garners at least two separate rejections from the examiners.

But this is a classic catch-22 example: people often examiners for spending too much time on examination, and thereby contributing to the 2.5-year average pendency of patent applications.

- David Stein

Re:The Point: URLs

[dabadab]

Non-obvious? Novel? Look at uuencoding or base64 encoding, they use a very similar concept, but they are case-sensitive and include other symbols besides letters and digits.

Re:Prior Art? Natural Area Codes

[akobelan]

The correct URL's are: http://www.nacgeo.com/nacsite/documents/nac.asp and http://www.travelgis.com/geocode Sorry!

Re:Is it entirely MS's fault?

[HiThere]

I have. I made one when I was 8. (It didn't work, because the peanut butter stuck to the waxed paper...but the idea was there. All I needed was a better sheath. Perhaps Skippy would know when it was invented...but it's been in supermarkets for years (not in sandwich form, precisely, but pre-combined peanut-butter and jelly in a non-stick container).

If you want to say that it takes an "invention" to go from Kraft processed cheese slices to processed peanut butter and jelly slices, I feel you have a rather low threshhold of "invention".

A few points

[nimblebrain]

It's an application for patent. It's not a patent yet, and hopefully it won't make it through the gauntlet. That said, it could easily make it through the gaps in the system.

Don't get bogged down by the "base 30" part. Patent applications have a "preferred embodiment" or current invention part, but this is not the part you have to worry about. Patent applications, if you have a good patent lawyer, try to cover off as broad a space as possible without getting summarily struck down. Look at the claims; they're the part that other companies can run afoul of. Other parts are supporting documentation to show that yes, it is an invention (you must make mention of the device the software runs on in software patents, for example) and to preemptively strike down the examiner's questions.

So, what we have here is a patent on turning lat/long information into fixed point (trivial), then represented as base anything. It does not have to be in a URL. It does not have to be base 30.

I don't think this one should stand.

I'm wondering how many other software developers hang out on here, and what they think of software patents. I'll say, for my part, that I've never had to refer to patents to help me in my line of work in any way whatsoever. Never mind the triple-indemnity-if-you-knew clauses. If you're given a problem to solve, you cover them with assumptions to make the problem easier, standard techniques and analysis, and other peoples' components to bring up the shortfall. Patents that are broad enough to worry about rarely contain content that's helpful.

I can't foresee patents helping software developers - unless you count learning to dance in minefields... 'helpful' :)

I don't even actually see Microsoft being the main worry on an ongoing basis. I see our industry being held to blackmail by IP "holding companies" who do not develop software, and thus who cannot be threatened or counterattacked in the same way as Microsoft can.

-- Ritchie