Realtor.com Virtual Earth Maps "Out"

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Monday, May 21. 2007

Realtor.com Virtual Earth Maps "Out"

Inman.com, which is a subscription site, offers an article called "Realtor.com rolls out free blogs for Realtors." I can't read it as I don't have a subscription, but what got me interested was this blurb, found via Google:

New features include a new mapping platform that uses Microsoft's Virtual Earth and a counter that calculates the number of properties that match the search ...

Now, that's all well and good, and was actually implemented back in April, but here's the odd part: searches on site are not mapped. Here's what I got each time I searched.

It didn't matter the geography nor the number of results found (at one point I had 200 and maybe that was too many, but 7 weren't mapped either, nor was 1).

So, could be tech difficulties, of course. But it's an odd message for that. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but is it possible due to the current lawsuit, Realtor.com has ceased to offer up these maps? Recall that the National Association of Realtors, which runs Realtor.com, is funding defendent Diane Sarkisian in a patent infringement case against REAL llc. The patent is about using a map to find selected properties of interest. I hope I'm wrong and this is just technical difficulties.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Microsoft, Patents at 06:00 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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The patent is for a client-server system (where the client dials into the host machine over a modem). I think that specificity should cause the suit to fail. Not to mention and obvious failure of the non-obviousness test for several of the broader claims.

That said a few real estate sites dependent on MRIS aren't working correctly today, they may be having IT issues.

#1 matt m (Link) on 2007-05-21 13:14 (Reply)

Matt,

I spent last week at the National Association of REALTORS conference in Washington DC and heard representatives from MLS companies, Mapping companies and even REALTOR spokespeople incorrectly assess and comment on this patent.

Many of them repeated talking points that obviously echoed murmurings from the back offices of the REALTOR.com and the NAR itself. Others were more creative and simply invented stuff. Yours is a hybrid.

The method patent 5032989 is not dependent or at all legally restricted by its client-server modeling for the liability they have alleged.

"Obviousness" is one of the latest rally cries, probably prompted by the recent court precedents that declared that combining two patented things together in a non-novel way wouldn't be enough to constitue a protectable/enforceable invention.

Today using graphical icons for navigation purposes on a computer interface is obvious...but at ONE TIME it was not. Timing is everything...that patent has a priority date of about 1985. That's about the same time the first version of WINDOWS became available.

If you read the court records for this case...you'll find the facts. Expert witnesses establish the patent is valid and the 1986 priority date. No prior art was submitted by the defense that can invalidate the patent. Expert witnesses and mulitple affidavits establish the requisite facts that demonstrate the infringement

A perjury motion was filed against the defendant because www.dianesarkisian.net was concealed and lied about under oath by the defense to try to obfuscate an "OBVIOUS" click by click example of her infringement of the patent.

THis patent case is tumbling downhill, with perjury and sanction motions against the defense starting to stack up like wallpaper. It doesn't benefit mapping professionals or real estate professionals to have individuals continually fabricate reasons why the Titanic couldn't possibly be taking on water.

The documents are available to the public for review and numerous stories have assessed and commented on them. http://www.rismedia.com/wp/2007-05-11/perjury-motion-filed-in-mapping-patent-case/

#1.1 Scott on 2007-05-22 09:30 (Reply)

The entire method 1 of 5032989 is assailable through prior art on GIS- these idiots from the patent office issued a patent on zooming in twice and filtering data by spatial query! This guy does not claim to have invented zooming in or GIS.

All of these claims are invalidated by the entire prior art of GIS, he just added in a particular type of data, which is invalidated by the general case prior use. There is nothing special about real estate properties that represents an invention, it's an application, and this is where the patent office is most easily led astray by pushy lawyers.

The patent is garbage. This is just normal lawyers and shady business people acting in bad faith to steal money. It makes me want to become a judge so I could assess fines against the plaintiffs. However, the deeper fix is for a patent system that is far too easily abused.

For reference, here is the method.

a) creating a database of the available real estate properties;

b) displaying a map of a desired geographic area;

c) selecting a first area having boundaries within the geographic area;

d) zooming in on the first area of the displayed map to about the boundaries of the first area to display a higher level of detail than the displayed map;

e) displaying the zoomed first area;

f) selecting a second area having boundaries within the zoomed first area;

g) displaying the second area and a plurality of points within the second area, each point representing the appropriate geographic location of an available real estate property; and

h) identifying available real estate properties within the database which are located within the second area.

#2 matt m (Link) on 2007-05-22 12:22 (Reply)

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