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Location-Based Search Was Patented In 1999
greenbird writes "Another patent fiasco has begun. Wired reports that a patent on location-based Internet searches was filed in 1996 and granted in 1999 (patent is here). A patent troll company name Geomas acquired the patent and has filed suit against Verizon in none other than Marshall, Texas. They claim this is the first in what will be a long line of lawsuits. Geomas has amassed a $20M war chest in venture capital to use for getting rich off of a clearly obvious idea."
Lots of things are obvious after they have been done for the first time.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Obvious now, but was it obvious in 1996 when they filed for it? The problem is that this sector advances so damn fast that it's hard to even tell sometimes.
Of course, holding the patent in their back pocket then arising like a submarine is a despicable action, one which I think should invalidate a patent. I think if you patent something you should be required to at least attempt to make a business off it instead of suing the shit out of people who have more balls than you.
How obvious was this in 1999 when the patent was granted?
Because most people arent stupid patent trolls?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Easy way around it would be to use a database that does not use that method.
a database of information organized into a hierarchy of geographical areas wherein entries corresponding to each one of said hierarchy of geographical areas is further organized into topics;
EX: every point is a specific lat and longitude.
DB has 2 indexes latitude and longitude.
Select * from loc where (lat loc_lat - 10) and (lon loc_long - 10)
EX2: Database of information organized into topics that are further organized into a hierarch of geographical areas.
Patents need to be specific enough not to be obvious and generic enough not to be easily circumvented.
um, the Yellow Pages ?
Those are called "dependent claims" where the first claim (claim 1 in this case) is the major claim and the dependencies all add an extra "limitation" to the claim. Example: Say I make a semiconductor circuit that is novel as my invention and then I say: The same circuit described in claim 1, wherein said circuit is manufactured using gallium arsenide. Now, the dependent claim is narrower than the original which just described the basic circuit since I'm saying the invention is now also manufactured using gallium arsenide. The claims you have spotted are actually narrowing the main claim to more detailed searches. This is a popular technique since the main independent claim is often shot down by the examiner, but one of the dependent claims (that is strictly narrower) can be elected to replace it if the narrower claim actually avoids prior art. Also, most Slashdot stories about patents imply that 1 patent covers the whole Internet or something dumb like that. In real life, the USPTO (and courts) generally keep the scope narrower. Just because this patent describes a method for doing geo-aware searches does not mean that every geo-aware search is covered, companies work around patents every single day.
You also have to remember, that it is not simply the claims that matter, but rather the disclosure of the actual subject matter in the patent that work. I can claim to cure cancer, but if my disclosed method is to throw ketchup packets at the cancer patient, then somebody else who actually cures cancer will have nothing to fear from my patent even if the claims are the same. If Verizon is using a technique that is substantially different from what is disclosed (or 'taught') by this patent, then it has nothing to fear, simply 'claiming' a technology is necessary but not sufficient to show infringement.
To those of you including the story poster who cavalierly call this "obvious", you have to remember that it is not the fact that it might be obvious today it was what was obvious in 1996.... so before you say "Google already does this!" Just remember these guys had the idea and applied for the patent in 1996... 2 years before Google even freakin' existed. Finding obviousness requires a careful reading of the patent and the prior art. It reminds me of a story about some digital photography patents that Kodak got in the late 1980's that some moron on this site called 'obvious' because his camera (from 2006) had the same features that were in the patent.....
As for the trolls who own the patent now, they can suck it, but at the same time, if the actual disclosures that are actually described in this patent are being used by Verizon, they should pay. If you were the lone inventor and some big company came and took your idea and never paid you for it, you'd probably want to be paid too.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I'm pretty sure the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy would qualify as prior art. That it is fictional in no way keeps it from embodying those ideas.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Say it again: "No software patents".
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
You do not get a patent on a problem or an idea. You get a patent on a solution to a problem, an implementation of an idea.
"Location-based search" is an idea. "A machine that can trap/kill mice" is an idea. "A sturdy container made from cardboard" is an idea. "Heating water to create steam to power the motion of a vehicle" is an idea shading towards an implementation. The intention of patents was not to patent the idea. Yes, ideas are often clever, creative, novel, or "innovative": "nobody ever thought of doing that before". But that means very little; somebody has to think of it the first time. In the grand scheme of thing, ideas are cheap, and not what patents are supposed to protect (in the interests of encouraging).
You are supposed to patent an implementation of an idea: a detailed, specific approach to solving the problem. The solution is not supposed to be "obvious to a skilled practitioner", but there is no enforcement of this in the patent system, which is where many valid grumbles about patents arise.
I don't know anything about cardboard box patents, but there are some obvious constraints on the problem. You'd probably like to be able to tile the plane with the unfolded shape, so you can cut them out of a larger run of the material. You'd like to be able to fold the thing up into something along the lines of a box (a rectangular parallelpiped)--boxes pack well for shipping. You need overlapping flaps to allow sealing it.
Given those constraints, there are probably only a few basic plausible methods for a design for making a cardboard box that's efficient and effective. Given so few plausible designs, somebody who invents one and patents it is not significantly helping or advancing science (because the constrained solution space is so small, any skilled practioner could invent one of the few possible solutions). Actual advances are what patents are intended to encourage, but (at least as I've characterized the problem) I doubt anything like that happened in the basic design of cardboard boxes. (I also know nothing about what, if anything, got patented. This is just trying to offer an analogy.)
This happens constantly in software; most of the time the idea is the only novelty, and the patent is either interpreted as covering all possible solutions to the idea (making alternative implementations irrelevant), or it patents the obviously best solution (if you're going to draw a cursor in a manner that's reversible, XOR is the most effective algorithm; there were apple ][ / Atari 800 games that drew sprites the same way--but the patent only covered uses of the algorithm for drawing cursors on windowed workstations). Someone long ago patented the idea of a networked game with sound and was semi-recently extorting game companies with it; the patent was old enough that the most viable candidate for prior art fell through, because although people used a port on the old Commodore Pet computer to create a networked game, and used the same port to drive a simple sound output, nobody ever did both at the same time (I guess it only had the one port); and without prior art, nobody involved in the patent system accepts that the idea that combining the two is obvious, or at least that the two or three obvious ways of implementing game-sound-in-networked-game are, indeed, obvious. Or (more accurately, I expect) they've abandoned all pretense of 'obviousness' as meaning anything other than 'prior art'.
is to enforce it, or so the old saying goes. Seriously, why don't we form an alliance to generate tons of pattens, place them in a troll company, and license them under terms that say they are exclusively for use in GPL'ed software. Proceeds after legal fees to go to further R&D of GPL'ed software.