

Patent troll says it owns GPS, sues Foursquare - alt_
http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/patent-troll-says-it-owns-gps-sues-foursquare/

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tptacek
The patent troll does not claim to "own GPS", nor does it make any kind of
sense whatsoever to represent the patent by one drawing in the patent
document. The drawings in a patent document exist for technical reasons, and
are in no way a reliable representation of what the patent means.

What matters are the claims.

The first patent, US7475057, looks very very simple: it's a single standalone
claim regarding:

* using a GPS receiver

* to populate a database

* by reading the GPS from a personal computing device

* when the device comes to a stable location

* sending that location to the server

* reading data about the location back from the server

* having the personal computing device request that the server save that information in a record associated with a user

* by using a system of detecting that the device has become stationary involving (i) reading the GPS, (ii) waiting, (iii) rereading the GPS, (iv) seeing if the location changed substantially.

This is a single claim; you'd have to be doing _all_ of these things to
infringe that patent.

(It's a remarkably broad claim and a dumb patent, although it was filed a fair
bit before personal GPS devices were common).

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coin
This might sound pedantic, but I get tired of people referring to "GPS" as a
mobile GPS naviation app. GPS refers to the entire system of satellites and
ground stations. From this system, one can build applications on top of a GPS
receiver, which provides the position. So yes, the patent troll doesn't own
the satellites and ground stations.

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tptacek
This patent appears to more or less very specifically claim Foursquare.

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woobar
I don't use Foursquare, just read the description of the service.

Does Foursquare use the very last step in the description? My understanding is
they update location when user "checks in", not when system detects that the
user's device is stationary.

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noonespecial
These seem to be becoming more and more _timing_ attacks. For any given
concept in software, it seems there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of
overlapping patents on various applications of the idea. It might be a login
authentication, a gps location or an in-app purchase. The point is, it doesn't
matter. The actual patent is irrelevant. Trolls have something that's going to
work, they just need to wait for that golden moment when a company just starts
becoming successful. Big enough to pay out, but too small to defend well
enough not to be easy money.

Perhaps we need a law firm that specializes in cheaply delaying troll cases
long enough for little companies to build some defenses. Perhaps trolls are
more like a manageable chronic disease rather than something that needs an
immediate cure.

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astrodust
This is why, short of changing the way patents are issued, damages should be
based on a meaningful metric like lost sales, or licensing fees, not
theoretical damages based on a hypothetical product that was never, ever going
to be made.

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philh
My understanding is that they can claim any amount of damages they want, but
won't necessarily be awarded the claimed amount; and that their business model
is based on people settling rather than on winning in court.

If this change was made, would there be a shortcut whereby the defendants
could simply lose and have to pay close-to-zero damages, or would they still
have to choose between "defending themselves in court", "settling" and "paying
the claimed damages"?

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alainbryden
I wonder if recent cries for the government to reform patent law is pressuring
patent trolls to hurry up and try to cash out on increasingly obvious claims.
All shell companies have to start doing it, because their 'colleagues' are
ruining the patent troll market with their own ridiculous claims and
essentially running each other into the ground.

~~~
ktizo
Interesting idea, so the more they try to profit from the crud, then the worse
it looks, so more players try to profit off their own crud before their crud
becomes worthless, and so on.

Presumably if that is true, there would be a threshold after which you don't
have to keep pushing because the behaviour of the patent holders is doing all
your work for you and the law gets changed because nobody wants to do business
in that environment.

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malachismith
WHY have we not reformed our patent system yet? Is it purely because of the
sway lawyers have over our legal system and regulatory system (and the
inherent conflict of interest that results)?

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jfb
Despite what people might have you believe, lawyers are almost certainly
neutral on this issue. Lawyers get paid either way. The patent system is the
way it is because it serves the interest of the _real_ monied interests. Too,
there is a legitimate argument that changing something so fundamentally
intertwingled with lots and lots and lots of economic activity is not
something to be done lightly.

Personally, I don't have a settled opinion on software patents. I'm much more
offended by the gruesome metastasis of copyright into an finite but unbounded
bludgeon.

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sureshv
The more contention and ambiguity (in the patent system), the more work there
is for attorneys. It would be in their best interest to keep the status quo.

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jfb
Yeah, but the number of practicing patent attorneys is very small. It's not
really useful to talk about "lawyers" as a class when dealing with a very
specific point of law, like software patents. It's not like changing the
patent system will a) put lawyers out on the street or b) even reduce the
overall complexity of the system.

The law is complex and difficult because it does so much, not by the
iniquitous behavior of a cabal of lawyers. The only way to reduce the
complexity is to throw away a lot of what we have decided is best handled
through the courts. It obviously can seem perverse and weird, but the world is
perverse and weird. Shit, even programming computers is an exercise in weird
perversity.

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PatentTroll
This. There are some problems with software patents, but the solution is not
to do away with them all-together. We as a country (and our founders in the
Constitution) have decided that limited term monopoly is a fair trade for
public disclosure. Exempting software would be an insult to software
engineers, putting their work on a lower level than other fields. Let's change
the discussion from the polarizing "burn it down" to "how can we do better?"

The legal system is complex, as is government, because it represents millions
of opinions on how best to do something and has been evolving for hundreds of
years. Imagine a 200 year old code repo. The original spec is ambitious in
scope but extremely vague, the guys who started the project left the company
years ago, and a few hundred co-workers give you vicious code-reviews. The
project runs life support for 300+ million people.

Patent lawyers aren't to blame. As of today, there are only 30734 patent
attorneys in the country, and only a portion will ever work in software
patents. Sure they profit from the status quo, but they'd profit from whatever
replaces the current system as well or they'd find work in other legal niches.
The idea that there is a secret club of evil patent lawyers pulling the
strings is laughable. If you want change, talk to your congressman.

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kleim
At least in France we have a law stating that if a third-party patent owner
fails to do something with the patent, the initial patent holder takes all his
right on the patent back. No wonder why many lobby want to get rid of this to
"have homogeneous laws in Europe"...

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stfu
Not really a well thought out suggestion, but wouldn't we get a lot less of
these lawsuits when there were a stronger defense mechanism in case the
alleged patent owner looses? It seems that changing the patent system is a
long shot project, but making it unattractive to sue could maybe become a
quick-fix easier to implement. These kinds of digging-in-the-dark lawsuits are
seemingly a by-product for many startups as soon as they get somewhat their
feet on the ground.

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keithpeter
From over here in the UK, the quickest fix would be a _central_ patents court
with expert judges and qualified patent lawyers.

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andrewpi
I'm not sure if a central patents court would necessarily fix things. The US
already has a central patent appeals court ('the Federal Circuit'), and if
anything, it has strengthened the rights of patent holders during the time it
has been in existence.

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SODaniel
Cause Foursquare are the only ones using the features in question. NO way that
any larger companies will side with Foursquare to squash this before it gets
traction.

I hope.

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andrewpi
I haven't fully reviewed the patents in question, but the oldest looks to have
a filing date of sometime in late 2000. I would think that there has to be
some prior art out there for many of the claims of this patent. For example,
the sport of geocaching was founded in May 2000, and people pretty quickly
started writing software applications to assist in finding caches.

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propercoil
oh there is prior art. the military used GPS way before 2000

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pjscott
The patents aren't on GPS; they're on obvious uses of GPS. (In both cases, the
entire technical value of the patent could fit in a single Tweet.)

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Killswitch
Interesting, my company I work at is based entirely on GPS... Wonder if this
could affect us.

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alpb
Not unless your company is worth around $1 billion.

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Killswitch
I'd say about 500mil... We're a relatively young company still.

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ohmmmy
should call up drew curtis
[http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_tro...](http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_troll.html)

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gddr
I just wondered if it would be possible for a company to sign something saying
that they will not accept any settlement (larger than $0) with the other
company (and that if they do they'll have to give an obscenely large amount of
money to someone else). Since patent trolls don't usually want to go to court,
precommitment should be enough for them to drop the case most of the time.

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lawnchair_larry
Intellectual Ventures shell company again?

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ktizo
As well as reforming the rules under which a patent is granted, we should also
double the pay of patent examiners, then make them professionally part-liable
for court costs arising from the granting of illegitimate monopolies in the
form of invalid patents.

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ntkachov
This is a terrible idea. If you read the AMA from the patent examiner on
reddit, he described that an shitty patent passes because, even though its
obvious to the examiner, they can't mark it as bad unless there is prior art
that they can find. They can't conduct exhaustive searches for these prior
arts and if they can't find prior art then they have to validate the patent.

We need to change the system from the ground up. Not start to make liable some
poor fella who happens to work at the USPTO who would have no idea that a
legitimate patent would cause a multi-million dollar case.

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ktizo
That's why you have to change the rules first. It should require a much higher
level of innovation to qualify for patent protection. And if we are going to
grant temporary monopolies, then there should be the relevant resources to
keep the system honest, otherwise it is just massive economic friction.

The idea of part-liability for examiners on costs is so that the liability of
a particular examiner is limited and is decided in the court and covered by
professional insurance, much like an architect, so it is not going to bankrupt
you, but getting too many of them could ruin your career and it is
automatically on public record.

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rprasad
I think the federal government would disagree with assertions of private
ownership of the GPS system....

Which is why the patent at issue does not claim ownership of GPS. It claims
ownership of a different method of location detection, somewhat similar to the
non-GPS system that Google and Apple use.

This article has been flagged for being incorrect and linkbaity. Who would
have thought that the quality of GigaOm would actually fall below that of
PandoDaily?

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rprasad
Guys, I clearly said the article does not claim ownership of GPS. It can't,
because the federal government was using GPS for that for a decade or two
before the system was opened up to the private.

What is covered by the patent is _other aspects of location tracking_ ,
specifically at issue here, the use of a central database to store detected
locations and to make use of detected locations for other purposes. In this
context, the patent claims _any form of geo-location technology_ which is used
to contribute to that database.

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DigitalJack
Well, the first patent most certainly does use GPS for location. The server is
used to retrieve information about that location.

Claims 1\. A method, using a personal computer device having a GPS receiver,
of populating a database comprising:

 _determining, by the personal computer device using its GPS receiver, a
location at which the personal computer device becomes relatively immobile;_

(rest of claim 1 ommited)

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Daniel_Newby
I do not appreciate editorializing in titles. Don't slur some organization as
a "troll", tell me what, exactly, they are doing that might be objectionable.

