Monday, May 12. 2008

NIM Social Networking Patent - Trouble for LBS Providers?

Details are in the press release (interesting timing to announce it at the start of Where 2.0) but the basics are:

- issued U.S. Patent No. 7,333,820, (filed in 2002, granted Feb 2008) titled "Position Determination System

- releases states the patent "protects its intellectual property involving social networking applications such as requesting and/or pushing a user's location via a GPS-enabled mobile device through a wireless network."

Here's the abstract:

The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing real-time position information of one party to another party by utilizing a conventional telecommunication network system such as the convention telephone network, a mobile telecommunications network, a computer network, or the Internet. More specifically, the preferred embodiments of the present invention allow a caller and a receiver of a telephone call to provide to and receive from each other position information related to the caller and/or receiver's physical location, including address information, GPS coordinates, nearby fixed locations such as a parking structure, etc. Additionally, the preferred embodiments of the present invention allow a caller and receiver to retrieve routing instructions or maps for traveling to or from each other. In another embodiment of the present invention, a party may locate the position of another party via the entry of the other party's unique identifier such as a phone number of the other party's mobile phone. In yet another embodiment of the present invention, the position information of a party may be concurrently delivered to another party's computer terminal whereby the other party can process the information in further detail.

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What is described above is the basis of most internet tracking/friend finder solutions that have been around for 10 years at this stage. Whether using GPS or network location this patent award is clearly not an invention but hey I'm sure a number of legal firms made some money on it. More likely an exercise in increasing the perceived IP value of the company in eyes of prospective purchasers.

#1 Patrick on 2008-05-13 03:15 (Reply)

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