Clapper May be Back in Washington

The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. (ret.) to be undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Clapper was head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) until he retired last June.

The post explains the job this way:

While the director of national intelligence is the president’s top intelligence advisor, the defense undersecretary coordinates the largest components of the intelligence community and almost 80 percent of the roughly $42 billion national intelligence budget.

The last we heard about Clapper he’d joined GeoEye’s Board of Directors (Nov 06) and taken a job at DFI Government Services. (Oct 06)

OnSite Returns: This time from Bentley

Bentley announced a new product today: OnSite. It is:

breakthrough software that connects the worlds of civil engineering design and construction. This new offering automates and streamlines tasks for stakeout, inspection, and measurement in the field, facilitating project management and helping ensure unprecedented levels of accuracy during construction.

Autodesk already had OnSite software. It had OnSite Desktop which became Envision. It had OnSite View. These are all now considered Support Only products). Autodesk also had OnSite Enterprise, though I can’t tell if that’s still around.

I’m not suggesting there are legal issues here - it’s Bentley OnSite and Autodesk OnSite, so they are legally distinct. Still, I think more distinguished naming might help hold mindshare.

REAL Patent Held Up as Example of Need for Patent Reform

Just to let folks now I’m still on the this story, today I found an editorial from Ann McQuaid, general manager in Hewlett-Packard’s Nashua, NH office, in the Union Leader (NH) arguing that the U.S. Patent System needs changing. She holds up the Diane Sarkisian/REAL lawsuit as evidence of the broken system spurring many unnecessary lawsuits:

There are many examples of the growing patent lawsuit industry. One is the lawsuit filed last year by a patent holding company against a Philadelphia-area real estate agent, Diane Sarkisian. The patent-holding company, REAL, claimed that by using an online multiple listing service, Sarkisian was infringing on a patent it held—essentially suing her for using a map. Never mind that the patent REAL claimed covers Internet searches was awarded in 1991, well before anyone envisioned the Internet as we know it today.

And never mind that multiple listing services are used by virtually every real estate agent in America, and have been for years. Sarkisian was targeted with a demand for $10,000 for one simple reason: REAL thought she would pay. REAL’s calculation was that since it would cost far more for Sarkisian to defend herself from a lawsuit than the $10,000 it demanded, she would choose to pay for the lawsuit to go away. Sarkisian instead decided to fight the claim, but REAL was right about the cost—it has been reported that the National Association of Realtors has contributed more than $800,000 for Sarkisian’s legal defense.

This story has every element that defines abusive patent lawsuits: an absurdly broad patent held for many years before an infringement claim is made; a holding company whose entire purpose is to leverage legal settlements out of defendants rather than invent or produce; and a target that is perceived by the patent holding company to be an easy mark.

OS and Google Talk; Don’t Agree

The Guardian continues its push against Ordnance Survey fees (Free Our Data) with an article highlighting how interest in a 3D London model got pretty involved and Google even stepped in to figure out how to make it public. Problem was, OS and Google have different ideas about payments.

The sticking point is understood to be Google’s attempt to negotiate a fixed fee for the data, rather than accepting Ordnance Survey’s practice of charging by the number of transactions. Ordnance Survey would not comment on the specific case, but said that a fixed fee would “wreck the level playing field for other partners” - and it should be noted that it is obliged to treat all customers (including itself) on the same terms. OS said it is happy for its data to be used in a “Google-type” environment. “Sites such as Multimap and Streetmap use our data and their services are freely available to the public over the web.”

Another tidbit from the article is a new “disruptive technology” from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, one of the orgs behind Virtual London:

Google Map Creator is a free application. It provides a quick and simple way of taking any computer data with geometry and spatial attributes and posting it on a Google Map web page.

Quote of the Week

“Over the next year or so, the big question [in mobile phones] is, ‘How will you sell location?’ It could be social networking, it could be child tracking, but it will likely involve taking it further than that. Presenting these technologies in a way that is palatable for consumers is the real challenge.”

- Dan Benjamin, a principal analyst at ABI Research, in an article about LBS/tracking business models in BusinessWeek. The website also offers a slide show of apps and phones using location.