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Facebook Patents Location Social Networking
bizwriter writes "Facebook just received a patent with broad claims that would seem to cover much of what Google (GOOG) Latitude, Foursquare, Gowalla, and others try to do in letting users share their locations with others. Patent number 7,809,805, called 'Systems and methods for automatically locating web-based social network members,' covers people manually entering a status, sending that and their location from a wireless device, and sharing both the status and location with others. Facebook's corporate value just took a big jump — and a number of other companies might have to either challenge the patent's validity or consider licensing deals."
You can't patent something that is obvious. Tacking GPS onto Dodgeball would occur to anyone who is familiar with both.
Except they didn't. It's easy in hindsight to say "oh that was obvious." If it was so obvious, WHY DIDN'T THEY DO IT?!
Why do I even come here? All the comments on every single patent article are the same:
"That's so obvious."
"This patent is invalid. was clearly demonstrated back in 1990 by " (what's in the abstract is irrelevant to what's claimed)
"lawyers are all scum"
Man, fuck you guys. If you spent as much time producing something useful as you did complaining, or, I don't know, actually trying yourself to fix the system, the world would be better off. But I guess it's easier to sit behind a computer and bitch.