
Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder - yock
http://blog.runwayfinder.com/
======
Vivtek
Oh, good Lord, when the patent was filed, RunwayFinder was _already online_.
Talk about prior art! This kind of abuse just boils my blood, especially when
it involves this kind of penny-ante bullshit, the whole rent-seeking mentality
of identifying a niche market that could really benefit from more open
information and then trying to dominate it for chump change.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_when the patent was filed, RunwayFinder was already online_

Doesn't matter. Patents are awarded by first to _invent_ not first to _file_.

~~~
pierrefar
Depends on where you are in the world. The European Patent Office explains:

 _Virtually every patent office in the world (including the EPO and the JPO)
is based on a first-to-file system. ... The USPTO, however, is the only office
to be based on a first-to-invent system, meaning that a patent is granted to
the person who first conceived and practiced the invention, rather than to the
person who first filed the invention with authorities._

[http://www.epo.org/topics/patent-system/patents-around-
the-w...](http://www.epo.org/topics/patent-system/patents-around-the-
world.html)

~~~
Natsu
I know that they want to change that, too, but I really hope they don't.
Otherwise, the people who didn't think a thing was even worth patenting (or
who couldn't afford to patent it) will have their inventions stolen from them.

I will justify the use of "stolen" here by saying it's because they're no
longer legally able to use their own idea. Restricting an idea via IP laws is
one of the few ways an idea can actually be stolen.

~~~
flipbrad
i'm not sure that's true, necessarily. IANAL (yet), but unless I'm mistaken, a
patent still has to be novel. So if they had publicly disclosed what they
thought had no value... they could invalidate any later patent that tried to
make it illegal for them to use their idea.

As for the obvious comeback - no, you shouldn't _not_ make public something
which you think has no value. Either patent it or stick it out there to
inspire someone with a different vision to your own. Don't hoard without
knowing how to execute, especially without believing it's worth executing. As
far as I'm concerned if you're doing that you deserve no rights to your
'invention' even if someone then comes along and patents it.

~~~
Natsu
Well, what I've seen has been different: in the JMRI case, they patented the
guy's idea and then sued him to stop using it (while infringing upon their
copyrights, if memory serves).

Frankly, I wish that independent reinvention were at least weighed against
novelty, but I haven't seen that work out in practice very often. Instead,
they race to connect the dots once someone makes a new kind of dot available,
even though everyone skilled in the art could probably could snap things
together like Lego (TM) brand building blocks.

------
NelsonMinar
This story is big news in the little world of general aviation. RunwayFinder
was an excellent free product, well loved, and a lot of pilots are angry about
it being bullied offline. RunwayFinder says they don't infringe. It seems
likely to me, between the prior art, the obviousness of the patent, and the
specificity of the patent claims (including language about using "housekeeping
frames"). But they lack the means to defend themselves. I blogged some more
analysis at [http://www.somebits.com/weblog/aviation/flightprep-
patent-76...](http://www.somebits.com/weblog/aviation/flightprep-
patent-7640098.html)

FlightPrep tried to go after the deep pockets in the industry, too, Jeppesen.
Jepp's apparently blown them off:
[http://www.aopa.org/flightplanning/articles/2010/101214AOPA_...](http://www.aopa.org/flightplanning/articles/2010/101214AOPA_Flight_Planner_does_not_infringe_on_patent.html)

------
shrikant
RunwayFinder says:

 _They won’t talk to me. Instead I’m stuck dealing with their lawyers who
twice said that if RunwayFinder pays a license fee (would you like 10% or 20%
of zero?) or removes the website that they will drop the lawsuit.
Unfortunately, they are now reneging on that and posturing for more. They are
claiming damages of $3.2M per month._

FlightPrep responds: [http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-
runwayfinder-sh...](http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-
shutting-down.html)

 _FlightPrep stands by its offer to grant a free-license to RunwayFinder to
operate its website during this negotiation phase of our legal dispute. We are
not asking RunwayFinder to shut down and in-fact are offering them a temporary
free-pass at our technology in hopes that this gesture of goodwill will better
enable both RunwayFinder and FlightPrep to constructively work toward a
mutually beneficial long-term solution._

Doesn't absolve them of hefting lawsuits around, but there seems to be some
sort of communication gap here...

~~~
gjm11
What's the betting that the terms of that "free" licence involve some sort of
admission of RunwayFinder's guilt, or of the validity of FlightPrep's patent?

~~~
tif
Doesn't the simple act of accepting a (free or otherwise) license from someone
imply that that you accept their right to grant said license?

Both parties I'm sure are aware of this; it's simply posturing on FlightPrep's
part with the hope that RunwayFinder will be dumb enough to accept it and
thereby lose in the long run.

~~~
kragen
No.

The classic case of a license in common law is permission to enter someone's
property. Consider this case:

Me, opening the door to my apartment: Oh shit! There's a burglar in my living
room!

Burglar: I'm not a burglar! This is my apartment! I've owned it for ten years.

Me: This isn't your apartment! It's my apartment! I bought it from Hugo López
last year!

Burglar: Hold on a second. As long as you don't lay your hands on me, I'll
allow you to remain in this living room to discuss this with me, but López
never actually owned this apartment. He rented it from me for a while, but I
evicted him five years ago for not paying rent. It was a fraudulent sale.

Me: Really? Shit. Listen, are you armed?

Burglar: No. Does this catsuit look like it has space for a gun? [Holds up
hands, turns 360°]

Me: I guess not. I'm still calling the police.

Burglar: Go ahead.

Me: [pulls out cellphone and starts dialing]

Now, the burglar has granted me a license to remain on what he claims is his
property. He could still be a burglar hoping to fool me long enough to get
away, or he could be telling the truth and be the legal owner of the place, or
in fact he could be telling the truth but López might have become the legal
owner of the place through adverse possession, but in none of these cases am I
accepting his claim and ceding the property to him simply by remaining in my
own living room, or by not bodily throwing him out.

~~~
tif
But if RunwayFinder intends to attack the validity of the patent by claiming
obviousness or something similar, I see the analogy as more like:

me: This was no-one's apartment when I got here. There are thousands like it,
in fact an infinite supply. Get your own.

burglar: Well, we'll work that out in court. In fact I own all of them.

me: No, it was public land and I just built my apartment here.

burglar: Well, how about you sign this lease. Just put your John Hancock here,
and I won't give you any trouble about staying here. I won't even charge you
any rent this month.

With the above dialog, doesn't the signing of the lease imply an acceptance of
the burglars ownership of not only this apartment but all of these apartments?

I am not a lawyer, obviously, just someone who likes analogies.

~~~
kragen
If you have to sign something, it's probably a contract, not a license. It
might turn out to be an invalid contract if you're already entitled to what
the burglar offers you.

Analogies to real property are problematic because of the excludable and rival
nature of real property.

------
megamark16
Software patents are so infuriating! It's amazing how something that was
designed to encourage creativity and innovation is effectively stopping
innovation.

------
regularfry
Invoking the "every visitor/download/viewer represents a lost sale" argument?
Seriously? Isn't that like Godwinning a legal exchange these days?

~~~
jrockway
Suing someone is expensive and risky. If the "victim" can just be bossed
around with scary numbers like "33 million dollars per month", then that's
excellent; they get what they want without even having to work for it.

(Personally, that amount would be more than I could ever pay off in a
lifetime, so I wouldn't worry about it. I would just join some teach-kids-to-
read-in-Africa chairty, leave the world of material wealth behind forever, and
never pay a dime of the settlement. Just to spite them.)

~~~
rbanffy
> leave the world of material wealth behind forever

I would devote my life to finding a way to countersue them into non-existence
as well as a way to disbar every lawyer involved in their offensive.

------
madars
The patent in question is <http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7640098.html>
(source: [http://news.priorsmart.com/stenbock-everson-v-
runwayfinder-l...](http://news.priorsmart.com/stenbock-everson-v-
runwayfinder-l3tD/))

~~~
Zak
To summarize: it's a patent on the idea of overlaying a flight plan on a map
using a website. The general case of this is drawing line-segments on a
background, something every trivial paint program can do. This patent clearly
fails the obviousness test.

~~~
pmiller2
It doesn't fail the obviousness test at the USPTO, because they seem not to
employ people with ordinary skill in the art of anything related to software.
At least, that's the most charitable explanation I can come up with.

~~~
WildUtah
There is a list of valid degrees that qualify a person to join the patent bar
or work as an examiner. A law degree is required and also an engineering
degree but software engineers are specifically excluded.

Civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineers and possibly others are
included and software is excluded. And this is the agency that evaluates and
issues patents to strangle our field.

------
clavalle
So there are patent defense companies like Allied Security Trust, RPX and the
Open Invention Network but it seems like these are for major players and/or
have very limited scopes.

Is there anything similar out there for smaller businesses, particularly for
those in the software industry?

Wouldn't it be nice to have an Open Invention Network type entity that can
build up an arsenal to defend against these types of existential threats?

I could see paying a monthly 'licensing and services' premium that would go
toward maintaining a patent portfolio, retaining defensive legal services and
maintaining a database of prior art and other useful information that can be
brought to bear in these kinds of situations.

I know there is regular patent insurance (I have never used it) but it seems
more offensive rather than defensive in nature and is expensive.

------
Empedocles99
Premise: a) Many (most?) small software outfits, and software developers don't
agree that software should be patentable.

b) Some of us would be willing to pay an insurance premium against patent
trolls

Proposal: Form an organization (or convince an existing one like the EFF)
funded (donations, I'd presume) by all of us to:

a) Lobby for changes to to the patent process and law.

b) Aggressively challenge obvious software patents as being obvious, or using
prior art.

c) Serve as a communal defense fund/legal help for small businesses against
patent trolls.

d) Maintain a community database of bad patents and potential prior art (to be
used in defensive or offensive legal actions)

~~~
flipbrad
you can presumably purchase before-the-event insurance anyhow. There just
isn't a big market. But can you seriously EFF/etc to be that insurance, and
have any money left over to lobby government (have you any idea what financial
scale we are talking about? in the UK, the pro-patent lobby just got our
government to reduce corporation tax on patent-derived income from 37.5% to
10% ! that takes some serious lobby clout) ?

~~~
clavalle
There are over a million software engineers and computer programmers in the
U.S. Say, 15% were convinced to give $30 a month (or their employers). That
would be over 50 million a year for operations. That is not including other
donations that would be solicited, or fees payed by other interested parties
such as hardware manufacturers, venture capitalists and the like.

Now will $50 mil. be the death knell for the pro software patent lobby? No,
there are big companies with very deep pockets that would fund the other side
well, but it is a fine start.

Of course, my hope would be that the $50 mil. would mostly go to crushing
trolls in court, sucking up tasty patents, building and maintaining a solid
resource of precedent and prior art in this area and setting good precedent
and leave the bulk of the lobbying to donations above and beyond the collected
fees.

------
blantonl
FlightPrep, the patent owner, posted this response to the issue:

[http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-
sh...](http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-shutting-
down.html)

~~~
jessriedel
Definitely good to see the other side's response, but the post immediately
prompts the question: what does Parsons stand to gain if he is shutting down
RunwayFinder in order to "try this case in the court of public opinion" as
FlightPrep claims (rather than simply to avoid getting sued over his hobby)?

~~~
joe_the_user
_Definitely good to see the other side's response_ and see what forked tongued
baloney it is...

"... our good faith offer to provide RunwayFinder a free license during
negotiation for a constructive resolution to our dispute and absent any
demands by FlightPrep"

IANAL but, as others have said, "absent any demands" could be interpreted as
"if you're willing to roll over and accept our utterly bogus patent.

"constructive" just as much meaning "profitable to our rent-seeking
schemes"...

And somehow the pilots community is against software patents? I wouldn't
imagine this an militant group of hacker. But after this experience, it seems
they've learned a little bit...

------
findm
Not only is the software patent outrageous but the lawyer math is totally
baloney every visitor represents a lost sale of 149. ridiculous.

~~~
patd
To be fair, it says "potential lost sale" :

Each visit represents a potential lost sale of our client’s patented invention
at $149 per sale

~~~
aristidb
Then it should at least be scaled by the probability of actually converting to
a sale...

------
jeffmould
From the patent, in the "Background of Invention" section:

 _However, as will become obvious later, additional applications of this
invention may also include the field of cartography, route planning for motor
vehicles, marine vehicles and similar utilization._

So does this mean they could potentially go after MapQuest or Google Maps for
providing route planning for motor vehicles as well?

~~~
acdha
Standard rules for patent trolls: that'll happen later. They're going after
little guys now so they can go into a case like that and claim that their
patent must be good - just look at how many other companies paid up!

------
mwg66
Is it possible for RunwayFinder to be hosted outside of the US? For example,
if RunwayFinder is not premium (and not _sold_ to the US), why can't the
service be hosted in the UK or Europe where the patent is not valid?

~~~
RyanONeill1970
You would hope so, in fact I have a business that I'm working on that has dumb
obvious patents filed in the US but I'm a UK citizen.

I still reckon they'll come after me though, they love to waste time and think
because they 'had an idea' that they own the rights.

~~~
mwg66
Good for you. I would suggest that Runway Finder moves to Europe and let's the
lawyers chase them.

------
flipbrad
I supposed it could be a big boost for FOSS if the remedy for IP infringement
wasn't damages calculated on expected (lost) sales, but an account for
profits; so you'd hand over the profit you made from infringing this patent
(rather than - hand over what we can convince a judge we would have made if we
didn't have to compete with a cheaper product)

~~~
kragen
It would probably hurt FOSS in the short term, because it would essentially
legalize not-for-profit copying — unlicensed copies of any proprietary
software would be legal, and so we'd have well-curated and reputable
repositories of AutoCAD, Microsoft Windows, OrCAD, Cisco IOS, and so on,
perhaps even with enhancements and ports to new platforms. I imagine this is
already the case in China.

------
lutorm
Is RunwayFinder the open-source flight planner? If so, it seems anyone can
just run it by itself? Is the source out there? I bet they wouldn't send
lawsuits to all their potential customers.

~~~
soitgoes
If it is open source, does the community provide any support to developers
that find themselves in this situation? Perhaps the EFF or the legal team of
an open source friendly company?

------
iheartcsharp
apparently the infamous flightprep team <http://i.imgur.com/v30tP.jpg>

------
nick24862486
This is very sad. I would be glad if we can have site to expose those patent
trolls. Browser plugin which automatically displays "Those are patent abusers,
don't visit!" when you try to visit given url's would be even better. Maybe
that would build some pressure to not use abusive claims.

------
moge
knowing nothing about the company or history the line about lost revenue just
made my blood boil. 22k unique visitors = 3.2 million in lost sales. 100%
conversation. There is so much fail going on here and that before you include
the insanity of the 'patent'.

~~~
cuchoperl
The line in question is a good example of law-fi literature:

 _"...that your website had 22,256 unique visitors in July 2010. Each visit
represents a potential lost sale of our client’s patented invention at $149
per sale. This damage calculation exceeds $3.2 million per month in lost
revenue."_

~~~
lutorm
Interesting how the "potential" got lost between lost sale and lost revenue...

------
ccarpenterg
For those (like me) who didn't know about RunwayFinder:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3fTLYwM1d0>

~~~
japaget
For those who hate video or have youtube.com blocked, see CrunchBase at
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/runwayfinder>:

RunwayFinder is a flight planning resource for U.S. pilots, showing current
weather conditions for airports in an area at a glance displayed on seamless
sectional and terminal charts. In addition, routes, range circles, and
temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) can be plotted.

------
kj12345
When a patent establishes a claim, and then says something like "Claim 19: The
process of claim 18 further comprising overlaying a route line", does that
mean the patent is narrowed to only things that include route lines, or does
it still apply to systems with/without route lines? If it's not narrowed by
the additional claims, what purpose do the additional claims serve?

~~~
ScottBurson
The benefit of multiple claims is separability. In your example, claim 18
might be found invalid, but claim 19, since it requires an additional element,
might still be valid. On the other hand, claim 18 might not be invalidated, in
which case the patent is broader (and therefore more valuable) than if it had
included only claim 19.

~~~
kj12345
Interesting, so the most broad claim that gets the most press might not end up
being the one that "counts", but on the other hand when someone says you have
to read the whole patent to know how narrow it is that's not necessarily true
either, since the most broad claim could be ruled valid.

------
aces
There was an article on here recently about how in general the more agressive
the lawyer is, the less case they have. Potentially the lawyer is bluffing. It
a tragedy, that you have to shut down. This sort of thing makes me wonder if
there is a market for a decentralized webserver. Sort of a bittorrent but for
web pages that would allow you to get around some of the patent claims--in a
way. The profit value of this would be that as traffic increased on site the
added users would handle some of the load. Essentially auto scaling without
the added hardware costs. Potential issues to get over is how to get the
browsers to support such a thing. Could websockets or even existing JSONP work
through it?

------
vegashacker
How did FlightPrep come up with such an exact number for visitors to
RunwayFinder (22,256)?

~~~
iheartcsharp
probably based on <http://www.quantcast.com/runwayfinder.com>

------
ppruitt
AvWeb interviewed Ross Neher from FlightPrep. At 5:02 they discuss the
RunwayFinder suit:

[http://www.avweb.com/podcast/podcast/AudioPodcast_FlightPrep...](http://www.avweb.com/podcast/podcast/AudioPodcast_FlightPrep_InternetFlightPlanningPatent_RossNeher_203795-1.html)

As a student pilot, I hope this gets sorted out soon. RunwayFinder has the
best VFR-sectional-over-Google-Maps interface of the available online tools.
Skyvector.com is a close second, but they don't seamlessly stitch together
charts (you must manually switch between them).

~~~
nene
From the interview:

 _\- How can you patent something like online flight planning? [--] Were you
just first ones to think of patenting it?

\- According to the Patent Office, that is correct._

The interviewer tries to squeeze information out from the man, but he just
talks his way around the actual question, saying things like IANAL, It's in
the Patent, the Patent is very specific, that's what the Patent Office says.

I wish the interviewer wasn't so soft with him.

------
conorh
Reading through the timeline it seems like the chose to enforce their (in my
opinion, bogus) patent in a very agressive way. Don't like this company at
all.

------
Kilimanjaro
Somebody get fuckpatenttrolls.com (or something like that) and create a site
for us to be informed of such evildoers.

Boycott is the only weapon we have to fight them.

------
ams6110
Well you could try the advice posted yesterday and tell them to eat shit and
fuck off. Maybe they are bluffing.

------
sdizdar
I believe that FlightPrep has a valid business plan. They have patent in order
to prevent commoditization (i.e., giving away things for free) of their
market. So they sue all free providers and if there is somebody with real
money (like Jeppesen) they understand they cannot go after them.

I think this something each copmany should do when entering a niche market
which can be easily commoditized.

~~~
dansingerman
If you are in a market that can easily be commoditized, you need to innovate
and provide extra value, not use legal loopholes to stifle innovation and
competition.

The World would be a far worse place if [insert any commodity here] was
patented and the owner of the patent could sell at a price of their choosing
(and licence at a price of their choosing)

