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.