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Google Awarded Broad Patent For Location-Based Advertising
Mashable has a report of a patent that just issued (6-1/2 years after filing) — apparently Google now has a lock on location-based advertising. It's not clear that the search company intends to assert the patent against any other companies (such as emerging rival Apple), but it's useful as leverage. Here is the patent.
Update: 03/02 14:34 GMT by S : Reader butlerm noted that the incorrect patent was linked. It now points to the correct URL.
I hope Google sues anyone who uses location-based advertising. That way, only Google will broadcast my location to advertisers. Avoid Google's product, and BAM! Privacy.
Seriously, though, Apple is already trying to stop app developers from using location information solely for advertising: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/news/archives/2010/february/#corelocation
This explains why Apple asked it's iPhone developers to stop using location based ads in their applications or at least be careful of how they use them.
Broad Patents suck.
That is all.
June, 1990 - The movie Total Recall used location based advertising as well as targeted advertising by identification of the pedestrian.
1991-1992-ish - messaging system services providers attempted location aware advertising. Lead balloon effect due to the similarity to spam it represents.
Getting a patent on the obvious is ... well, it shouldn't happen, but it does.
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What gives? Google applied for the patent in 2004, but I've been seeing IP Address-based geolocation-targeted ads since way before 2004. You'd be served different different ads depending on where you lived based on your IP address.
How is this different?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation_software
http://www.object404.com
So if I write code that says "if point selected on map is between a latitude of 40 and 42 and a longitude of between 130 and 131* then pop up Bob's Restaurant ad", I owe royalties?
* I hope somebody with too much time on their hand doesn't tell me this is in the middle of a large ocean. Bob floats, okay? More specifically, Bob bobs.
Table-ized A.I.
I think Nokia is hit worst with this patent. I've seen them run tests on this kind of system on shopping malls, and releasing the navigation for free was probably part of the plan to start offering location based advertisement and other services on top of it. Google likely won't be very interested at licensing it either since advertising is their main business.
Very obvious thought as well as implementation.
Been done time and time again over the years in just about every technical platform.
Go away Google, this is plain patent abuse by the rich.
It is time for a coordinated world-wide BOFH system shutdown in order to FORCE a review of IP laws and how they relate to technology.
How many billions (trillions?) of dollars have been wasted on lawyers and swapped between major industry players in the last 30 years over IP bitch-fighting !?
Not to mention that while the big guns are duking it out, the little guy (even the not-so-little guy) is absolutely screwed along with any form of innovation.
#$%^ all of these uber-corporations. Its seriously time to send a message to both governments around the world, and the people on the street, that the system is FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN...
_|_ google
Three attempts out of five to view the mentioned patent, I ended up at "Method and system for approving documents based on image similarity", and the other two I ended up at other Google patents that have nothing to do with TFA. Perhaps it would be more reliable in the face of a slashdotting to Google Google's patents on Google Patents.
Isn't a billboard an example of "location-based advertising"?
The problem with the current patent system is that Google needs a war chest full of patents to survive. When Microsoft goes on a rampage like they do now, demanding anyone using linux to pay Microsoft its essential.
Having a patents like this makes Google less of a target.
The system is utterly broken but i dont blame the companies playing the game, i blame the stupid politicians who allow this.
HTTP/1.1 400
The link both in the original post and in the cited article (to say nothing of dozens of other articles) cites the wrong patent.
The correct one is patent application 20050050027, but the patent number seems to be harder to track down. In fact I am not sure it has been granted at all.
The incorrectly linked patent is about remote ad selection for broadcast radio stations, which is not particularly relevant here.
I hope Google sues anyone who uses location-based advertising. That way, only Google will broadcast my location to advertisers. Avoid Google's product, and BAM! Privacy.
Well, it appears that patent is still being examined in the European patent office (and it looks like it's already had a couple of rounds), so that approach ain't going to work, at least, in Europe.
Unfortunately the site's only now to be found on archive.org, but tradepiper.co.uk was all about giving location-specific adverts from both local and national businesses, and this was back in 2001 kinda time. Looks like what the patent talks about matches pretty closely to most of the stuff we were doing back then.
The correct patent is patent 7,668,832 granted Feb 23, 2010 as listed http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7668832.PN.&OS=pn/7668832&RS=PN/7668832 Thanks ButlerM
Location based advertising - Isnt that called billboards?
Or store signs or product displays?
To say you want to claim the right that at X and Y coordinates you control the method of putting up product advertising with *gasp* price information is all silly - they are called signs. Stores use them all the time.
And yes IP specific advertisement has been around before the 2003-2004 patent. Now the IPs move and become mobile shouldnt
make a difference.
Geoworks demonstrated this on the San Francisco local news back in 2000.
Check out:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-66096362.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-66915753.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-66096362.html
idea was that a device could be carried over which a third party could submit information that upon you reaching or researching locations would become aware of that information. essentially a digital billboard. near a movie theater? here: watch previews of the shows and times. near the packie? here: our sale on cognac. near the bridge? here: the number of the Samaritans.
what i did not know was that i only needed to write up the idea and patent it with Out a working physical prototype.
for me, this idea is obvious and a natural evolution of technology and use thereof.
comment directly in my journal
I don't actually have anything to say. I'm just claiming this space so I can later sell it to Google for ads.
Here are papers published in 2001 and 2003 describing location advertising in the open source mobilemaps search engine:
.co.uk website.
http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=281
http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=369
This still has a ghost site up on the net. One of the original authors is contactable at abrahaph at yahoo's
The patent isn't "location-based advertising". It's not even "Determining and/or using location information in an ad system", which is at least the title of the patent. The patented invention is solely bounded by the claims, and I don't see anything your linked articles regarding determining geolocation price information of an ad.
Location based advertising - Isnt that called billboards?
Or store signs or product displays?
To say you want to claim the right that at X and Y coordinates you control the method of putting up product advertising with *gasp* price information is all silly - they are called signs. Stores use them all the time.
You linked to the correct patent, but apparently completely failed to read it. The patent is what's in the claims, not the title, abstract, or the title of this Slashdot article.
Patent was filed in 2003. But in 2002 (I think it was June but maybe if I check some old records I can narrow this down) I was watching TV and noticed an advertisement for a local business. I didn't think much about it at the time, but a few months later I travelled to another state, and exhausted after the drive, I watched some TV inside my far-from-home hotel room. I didn't see any advertisements for my home town businesses! I'll have to check my old VHS tapes to confirm this.
In fact, I think I saw an issue of the local newspaper in 2001, where the classified ads section happened to advertise several apartments for rent in my town, and no apartments from apartment advertisers on the other side of the continent. I wonder if I can still find that paper.
No wait.. in 1999 there was a rock band who had hired a national ad agency to place concert ads in the cities through which they were touring, only targeting the local media but not paying extra to show the ads to the whole national audience. Shit, what was the name of that flash-in-the-pan rock band? Does anyone remember?
Now that I think of it, in 1998 David Attenborough documented a male bird in Indonesia, where it was showing off its colors and song only to females within a few miles of itself. Birds in Louisiana were totally ignored for its advertising purposes, as the resource cost of transmitting ad to them, was judged by its marketing department as being not worth the expense. (Not to mention that the Louisiana birds may have been genetically incompatible.) Attenborough did a good job of explaining how that bird really wanted to fuck the local females. Maybe I can find a torrent of this show, because it sounds like birds have been doing this at least 5 years before Google.
Maybe I'm mis-remembering this stuff, but I think industries may have been using location based advertising prior to 2003. Finding the proof won't be easy, though.
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it's good information for me http://x-blogcontest.blogspot.com/2010/02/jadwal-pertandingan-piala-dunia-2010.html