Facebook Patents Location Social Networking

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 6, 2010 @04:12AM from the wish-i-thought-of-locations dept.

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."

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Re:/. fails again by Theaetetus · 2010-10-06 07:38 · Score: 3, Informative

Problem is my old website had the capability to do ALL of this before it went under. Our newer reincarnation does not have this built in, but I still have the full database from my old website from 5 years ago. Would this count as prior art against the patent?
Prove it. You can send prior art to the USPTO to consider.