The real news is that Apple is building a universal mashup of location-based services related to traveling. This will include any service, preference, or purchase, you can make while traveling. The patent claim mentions a comprehensive list, including arrival notification, restaurant reservations, travel itinerary, airport maps, control seat services (audio, video, temperature, lights, entertainment), preferences (seating, flying times, meals, airlines, airports), access to 3rd party services, and more.
In this manner, through an integrated application, a travel service provider can maintain a constant connection between the travel service provider and the user. This can result in changing a user's travel experience from a fragmented and disjointed process to one that is instead seamless and fluid.
At one point they use the WhereTo application as a sample UI that could access the service. WhereTo is a wheel where you click to jump to Google Places. This does not mean they intent to patent the UI, but the technology behind it. I mean, read the damn thing:
Accordingly, through the integrated application, airport services can be searched for, browsed, viewed, and otherwise listed or presented to the user. For example, an interface such as interface 602 [602 refers to the Where To? drawing] can be provided on a user’s electronic device.
The UI is not the subject of the patent claim, but an example of how to use it.
The real problem, as I see it, is that no one thought to approach FutureTap, and let them know that they’d be doing so. I deal with patent applications a lot at work because they’re often used as evidence in trials that I work on, and there’s no way around the fact that they’re hard to decipher. Bloggers are bound to read a lot into this, and a lot of the speculation is going to be based on a lack of information.
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Apple has been building a WiFi-based location database using data collected by the iPhone and other mobile devices since January 2008, and finally replaced Skyhook as his provider last April.
The real news is that Apple is building a universal mashup of location-based services related to traveling. This will include any service, preference, or purchase, you can make while traveling. The patent claim mentions a comprehensive list, including arrival notification, restaurant reservations, travel itinerary, airport maps, control seat services (audio, video, temperature, lights, entertainment), preferences (seating, flying times, meals, airlines, airports), access to 3rd party services, and more.
At one point they use the WhereTo application as a sample UI that could access the service. WhereTo is a wheel where you click to jump to Google Places. This does not mean they intent to patent the UI, but the technology behind it. I mean, read the damn thing:
The UI is not the subject of the patent claim, but an example of how to use it.
WhereTo developers said This paragraph sounds like a claim that describes Where To?’s functionality pretty exactly. Yes, yours and the hundred more apps that also use the same service, but you didn't invent Google Places. Hell, if I design a cube interface tomorrow, I still didn't invent Google Places.
In the words of Brian Ford: