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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."
With all the mobile companies already suing each other, this should just add more..
Awesome.
Companies patent widely implemented ideas and sue everyone. Oh wait, that's not new.
Well the current purpose of the patent system is to provide work and revenue for lawyers. Its a way for them to attach themselves like parasites to the software buisness.
Perhaps instead of suing each other and licencing everything they could all get together and help get rid of software patents. Just imagine the money they could save on lawyers, in both applying for the patents, and defending against them.
A patent on patenting would never be upheld because it would derail the gravy train for the legal industry.
APRS was invernted in 1994, by 2000 had all the features described in the patent. And, unlike a lot of claims of prior art, this one is meticulously documented in the proceedings of the Digital Communications Conference by WB4APR, WU2Z, K4HG, and others. Of course, fighting this will be expensive, but hopefully someone will.
The only ground to contest this prior art is whether ham radio is a social network. On that score I can only paraphrase the Breakfast Club: "It is social. Sad and pathetic yes, but social"