You might be surprised what people might be able to get away with,
though. There's been repeated attempts to patent "web mapping" for
example, and if it wasn't for the efforts of a few dedicated people,
there would now be patents in both Britain and the USA on displaying
maps over the web. But the threat is not dead yet, believe it or not,
and it may culminate in a battle between Microsoft and Google sometime
in the near future. Check out Daniel Morissette's blog entry for Feb 21,
2009, "Microsoft Patents the Map" at http://www.systemed.net/blog/?p=68.
If Microsoft really uses the Multimap patent to put the bite on Google,
then you can bet your bippy that it'll affect your web mapping business
too.
If reading that article brings your blood to a righteous boil, and you
want to know more about who really invented web mapping, see Carl Reed's
2004 article, "Intellectual Property, Patents, and Web Mapping:
Historical Perspective" at
http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=28360.
- Bill Thoen
GISnet - www.gisnet.com
Brian Russo wrote:
I've seen legends similar to that before; afraid I can't offer
anything solid in terms of prior art examples but it's hardly as
revolutionary as they seem to think.
Pretty absurd if you ask me;
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 7:34 AM, "René A. Enguehard"
<ahugen...@gmail.com <mailto:ahugen...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I suspect they might be applying for the patent but in for quite a
surprise when it gets rejected. Features for maps would be very
tricky to patent and, more importantly, not in the interest of the
general public. As such the patent applications would probably get
rejected. Would we really want people patenting things like
projections, north arrows, scale bars or legends? I don't think it
would be productive and suspect any patent office in its right
mind would see it the same way.
Patents were created to help people protect their ideas for a
length of time so they could reap the rewards of their work and
refine it without fear of being copied or undercut. This works
very well for many things but fails miserably for conceptual
things like maps or layouts for books or posters. This is why many
patent offices now require people to patent "systems" rather than
"things". I don't see how a wrap-around map could be explained as
a system.
René
IANAL
Landon Blake wrote:
The latest issue of the ACSM Bulletin had an interesting
article about a map matrix that wraps around the edge of a
paper map. It seems the company that is using this feature of
hard copy map design is applying for a patent. I didn’t even
think you could get a patent a feature of a paper map. It got
me wondering who holds the patent on the use of a north arrow
and scale.
At any rate, here is the article if you are interested in
reading it:
http://www.webmazine.org/issues/current/documents/wrap.pdf
I couldn’t find the patent application, or I would have posted
a link to it. Let me know if you have any comments.
Landon
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