Slashdot Mirror
IBM Seeks Patent On Retailer-Rigged Driving Routes
theodp writes "On IBM's Smarter Planet, you may drive further than need be to get to your destination. Big Blue's pending patent for Determining Travel Routes by Using Fee-Based Location Preferences calls for the likes of Walmart, Starbucks, and Best Buy pay a fee in return for having your route calculation service de-optimize driving instructions to make you do a drive-by of their stores, and an additional fee if GPS tracking of your car indicates you actually took the suboptimal route. The same IBM inventors also have a patent pending for Environmental Stewardship Based on Driving Behavior, which calls for yet another fee to be assessed when a retailer-friendly-but-suboptimal route causes your vehicle to enter a congested area and produce more pollution."
IBM gets bonus points if they patent these then sit on them, thus disallowing anyone from actually implementing them.
Of course they could turn "Evil"
How many other evil things can we thing of to patent to prevent people from actually doing them?
I would bet that there is also going to be a way for the user to pay a fee not to be sent on the suboptimal route.
Just what we need get off highway and get back on for each small town you pass by.
In the past I use to get stuff like that with on line maps where they keep having you get on off the same road but may of been a bug or just poor weighting.
How long before it the gps says
"Go in to best buy and ask for geek suard for map update service Only $49.99"
and then the GPS cuts off your engine / dumps your remaining fuel once you're right next to a service station, and the bio-chhip in your kids makes them hungry whenever you're close to a Mickey D. Off to the patent office for me !
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Well if they are going to make you drive all over just to go past stores that have paid a fee to jack around with your GPS then why not do the same thing to the remote control for your TV... you push the button on your remote control on your TV to go to NBC or HBO and instead you are immediately redirected to a brief ad from whatever giant conglomerate paid to hijack your remote control after which you go directly to the tv station you requested by pushing the button in the first place. Moreover, they can sell an ad free version of the remote control for an additional $40. I MEAN WHY THE HECK NOT... it would be a goldmine.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
I consider my paranoia validated.
So, everything someone thinks of while high on pot is now eligible for patenting? This crap doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm not currently high.
I don't get this GPS craze. It seems that most of the regular population in the US thinks that a GPS is a "have to have" device/feature. What's the deal? Did everybody forget where they were going all em masse? I certainly don't need a GPs to get around my own town, and if I'm going out of town, I'll grab a "map" if I need one. They're made out of paper, and they generally cost about $5.
I don't respond to AC's.
This is awesome because now you don't need to look for a wal-mart, strabucks, best buy and other when you want to go shopping, you just put your home address as the destination and you'll have a route all setup for you.
lucm, indeed.
Earlier today, I took a bunch of glass bottles to the recycle center, and I drove. How much do I owe IBM?
#DeleteChrome
1. The head of a project takes his bunch of interns into a meeting room to brainstorm random things you could do which have any sort of tenuous tangential connection to the project.
2. Lawyers!!!
3. IBM pays dude a few thousand dollars bonus.
(4. Interns are eligible for bonus if they join IBM, but seek less-dysfunctional workplaces where they don't have to use Lotus Notes.)
Seriously, that's the reason I have my name on a patent which basically says "you could have a weight sensor on a bus, guess the number of passengers, and use that for capacity planning somehow." For bonus points, check out the flowchart.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Iguide sucks now and the last thing it needs is more ad's
Under advertiser control it is pretty ugly, of course. But it would actually be nice if I could map a route and say "along the way, I need to find cheap gas, an Asian grocer, and try to get me to a Walmart or Target (don't care which) if it is it not *too* much deviation.
Pure FUD. First to file does NOT mean that prior art is ignored. Prior art will invalidate a patent now just as it did before. The rest of the world has been "first to file" for, like, forever. If someone has published it, then no-one can patent it.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Two words for ya: Prior Art.
+ like 1,000,000 Internets for you, whoever57. Whoever started this meme that first to file means prior art no longer counts or that now people can just copy ideas and file an application if no one else has needs to be beaten. Severely. I have seen it spread all over slashdot and it's just plain WRONG.
It makes me want to claw my eyes out so I can't read the stupidity.
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
You do know, the rules about prior art don't magically vanish with first to file right? If something got published in a research paper, that will get cited as prior art, and IBM will have done little but enrich both patent attorneys and the patent office, and delayed useful patents (cause the examiner needed to find that paper) from being processed in a timely manner.
Where, exactly, does the second linked patent say anything at all about routes, fees, retailers, or congestion? As I read it, the second patent is about charging tailgaters a higher toll, based on the theory that tailgating causes everyone behind the tailgater to increase braking and acceleration, which is bad for the environment.
Have gnu, will travel.
How is it possible to NOT drive past a Starbucks when going.... anywhere.....
Posts like these are the reason why we need a "Wrong" moderation category.
If it makes you feel any better, you won't technically be wrong for another 18 months, when first-to-file goes into effect for newly-filed applications.
Bangkok Tuk-Tuk drivers.
New Delhi motorcycle taxis.
Prior invention in the sense of I saw somebody else do it, but I'm filing a patent on it?! It absolutely must be disclosed. In fact, it's inequitable conduct to file a patent on something you didn't come up with.
Text of 102(a) now:
`(a) Novelty; Prior Art- A person shall be entitled to a patent unless--
`(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention
If someone else publicly used it. YOU CAN'T GET A PATENT ON IT.
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Or why you should never buy a GPS system made by IBM.
IBM doesn't usually sell GPS navigation software directly to consumers; instead what will happen is other companies OEM IBM's software in their consumer products, and people will have the software without ever knowing that their shiny new nav unit is actually a piece of hardware running an application written by IBM.
OF course.... the days of shiny new nav units are numbered, as Smart phones such as Android/iPhone, are obsoleting dedicated nav devices by having apps that perform the function.
Remember the good ole days? http://www.thomasguidebooks.com/
You seem to be suggesting debit-card cashback as an ATM substitute.
Target offers that, but they limit it to $40. Other places I used had similar limits: $35, $50. So that's a problem if you want a couple hundred, and going to multiple such stores cuts down on the "fewer trips" advantage. One has to buy at least a little something at each store (which is still better than ATM fees, especially if it's an item you'd buy anyway)
I became very familiar with the debit card cashback feature when taking a summer internship in an area that does not happen to have branches of either of the banks where I already had accounts.(Normally I go in a branch and fill out a withdrawal slip, let alone simply visit the ATM - I'm interested in amounts besides $20 increments, and items besides $20 bills.) Even large bank chains like the two I'm referring to often seem to be regionalized like that. Also, many banks will still make change for non-account-holders.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In complete agreement with you that I wouldn't want anyone interfering with my routing either. Reading the comments, I think the way they would successfully market this is by selling it cheaper than an average GPS -- and making up for the discount to you by receiving fees from retailers. This would be like how consumer PCs bundled with crapware or trialware sell for less than an identically-equipped business PC with a clean OS build. So you and I wouldn't buy it, but someone who didn't know better and was excited to find a really cheap GPS would... which then makes full sense as to why Target and Walmart and Starbucks are named as potential route-bidders, but not BMW or Crate and Barrel.
Since we are talking commercial interest, why not give this sort of thing to the insurance companies? Instead of increasing rates for dangerous drivers we can route them away from confusing intersections, distracting billboards, cliffs, cities, other cars, and objects in general. Direct them around a parking lot for several hours if they've just left a bar, stop navigation if they're driving too fast, the possibilities are endless!
To think my original suggestions were directing people the wrong way over road spikes (sponsored by Joe's Tires) or through speed traps (courtesy your local government)
Wait.... people buy units that are only a GPS? That's absurd! Why would you buy a dedicated GPS when you can get an Android unit that's not only a GPS, but a telephone, a clock, text message client, email client, Web browser, Internet access point, dictaphone, camera, scanner, flashlight, radio, MP3 player, aircraft location scanner, video game console, flight simulator, and all the other things that a smart phone is, all in one?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'm surprised nobody has brought up the subject of privacy yet. I'm pretty sure that any business paying to be routed this way is going to want some kind of statistics or metrics for their money. At the very least they're going to want to know how many times their locations were included in routes. And potentially much more - such as time of day, endpoints of the overall route, etc. So somehow the device is going to have to be able to communicate back to some central server - either in realtime or possibly in batch when maps are updated. Sounds like the old smartphone tracking mess all over again.
There is the $79 once (GPS) vs. $50-$99 every month (phone) tradeoff, that's a consideration for many. :-)
Of course my nearest starbucks is 300 ks away and the nearest walmart is 5000km or more - so that route for me would be suboptimal indeed.
I went to mod the above post +1, Funny and got this:
User not allowed to moderate this comment.
WTF!?!????
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Put another way, don't confuse an IBM patent filing with IBM as a company having any ideas about doing something with it.
I worked for IBM until recently. The company collects patents like people used to collect stamps, on the basis that just about anything in a big patent portfolio is both protection from law suits and income from licensing. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to submit potential patents on anything that occurs to them, with rewards for successful filings, and more filings equaling bigger rewards. Employees with a record of successful filing screen new submissions and help improve them where appropriate. Promising submissions are filed in Europe, or the States, or wherever seems best, if they're seen as having a good chance of success. Ideas deemed not quite good enough are disclosed (to put the ideas in the public domain and stop someone else filing on them and using them against IBM). And whilst I wouldn't be surprised if there was the occasional discussion as to whether IBM ought to be associated with SOME submissions, and the company is clearly interested in patents in areas that relate to its business, and most filings undoubtedly WILL relate vaguely to its business (because that's mostly what its employees are thinking about all day) there are no guidelines on what can be filed, or "taboo" areas. I'm told that the company even has patents relating to sex toys. (Jokes here would be in debatable taste - I and many others were forced into early retirement when IBM right-royally shafted our pensions).
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/
Mainly covers DRM products, but this sentence from their website is relevant:
These products have been intentionally crippled from the users' perspective, and are therefore "defective by design".
This is just a polite cought from IBM to remind Apple, MS, Google, HP, Samsung and the likes who invented original evil. This is classy stuff, forget about silly lawsuits and threathening to sue your customers. Control their every move like the drones they are. THAT is CLASS. That is pure unadulterated evil.
Basically they are saying, "Look out, we are still here and we are still the masters of darkness. Any of you whippersnappers forget that and we will have your headquarters surrounded by a thousand sheep following our GPS to their slaughter."
I have taken the hint and re-labelled my PC as an IBM-compatible to pay homage to the master.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Presumably the idea is that if one in (say) N people who drive past X brand coffee shop would be tempted to buy a coffee that they otherwise would not have. Let's do some arithmetic:
I suspect that 30 is far too low a number, many people are busy, driving to get somewhere to do something else, ... this just makes the return to the shop keeper even worse.
SUMMARY: it just doesn't add up
And they are often FREE, advertising supported, and always looking for new revenue sources, so watch-out!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
How many other evil things can we thing of to patent to prevent people from actually doing them?
We could include a collision detection device in the GPS that automatically calls a vendor sponsoring hospital, even though it might be faster to call 911 and get the closest hospital...
As a side effect the system will also call hospitals whenever you brake hard, which of course is something you'll pay a decent fee for...
What is this with people confusing the words "of" and "have"?
Unlike "their"/"they're"/"there" or "once"/"ones", the pronunciation isn't even similar.
I'm not a native speaker, can anyone explain this to me?
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Isn't there some part of the US Patent Office mission statement that says what they are doing should be for the public good? Why would the US population fund an agency that generates annoying or evil patents? If I create an idea that is novel and non-obvious but only leads to an increase in human misery ("Novel Method for Inducing World Famine and Disease Using a Video Gaming System..."), is that still patentable? Even if the route mod fee went to me, I still wouldn't go to Walmart.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
You are kidding right? Try not having a $100/mo phone bill. You could buy a new GPS every month for what you have to give Verizon.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Off topic but I hope that explains it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
How long before street gangs set up pseudo-legit businesses to use this service to send people down the wrong part of town where they can be mugged?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What exactly is so difficult in having low phone bills?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You all know that they still make maps, so just learn to read one and learn your way around. Why on Earth would you need gps just to find a Walmart or Starbucks or your uncle Dan's house?
Staying in an unfamiliar city? Look in the phone book's yellow pages. Oh, and there's usually a map there, too.
You may also want to learn to use a compass just in case the gps satellites are compromised one of these days.
maps.google.com + pen + paper.
Patent trolling someone that would use those patents is pure genius!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
for a GPS maker to sell a device which advertizes that it does not included purchased waypoints to misdirect the traffic. But, knowing the ethical level of businesses today, they'd sell a device that currently markets for $100 for $500.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
These devices aren't going to be sold to consumers as if they were in any way different than the GPS unit that doesn't calculate routes based on advertising income. In fact, if we are all very very lucky, Garmin and TomTom won't buy into this, and it'll only be in phones and built in navigation for cars.
Yeah, your phone. Did you think that high end processing device that came to you absolutely LOADED with crap-ware / ad-ware wouldn't JUMP at the chance to implement this sort of thing? Why not? The deal is entirely opaque to the consumer. In the EULA is a tiny section that reads "We might sell your data to other people, especially partners, we might also reroute your trips based on how much our partners (we sold them your info) pay us" You'll never notice, and more importantly neither will anyone else. The rest of the deal happens behind your back between companies, and doesn't take you or your concerns into account at all. If they ever get called on it (hahahahaha), they can say it was to improve service and competition. At which point it all goes under the rug and a retroactive law immunizes the telcos against lawsuits over it. (deja vu?)
I'm going to assume this is sarcasm. On the chance that it is not, here is the best reason. Your phone's GPS? It sucks. Really bad. Most of the time you are lucky if it can tell which of two parallel roads you are on. My stand alone unit not only knows which road, but which LANE. Most of the time it can tell you how close you are to the curb. Also, your phone won't survive a 3 day snowmobile trip, my stand alone will and then some. Oh, and the monthly fee is zero.