Click on two points to display a route, touch two points to display a route -
this is natural progression from mouse based hardware to touch screen mode.
There should not be any patent there, it is just a generic change in pointing
device.
Numerous web apps (& mapping portals) dim the background for popups & other
"foreground" info - hopefully nothing new or patentable there.
My concern is not this has been applied for, but that someone presumeably
believes such minor adaptations are patentable under US law.
Hopefully not - coming from a country which recently legislated software as not
patentable.
Shock, horror - could OSGEO join with ESRI to contest this? A comparable case a
few years ago in New Zealand created a very unusual set of bedfellows - who
successfully contested the patent, at a cost substantially cheaper than
pursuing individual cases against it. See:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=3576578
Cheers,
Brent Wood
________________________________
From: Puneet Kishor <punk.k...@gmail.com>
To: Simon (SPDBA) Greener <si...@spatialdbadvisor.com>
Cc: OSGeo Discussions <discuss@lists.osgeo.org>; OSGeo-Board
<bo...@lists.osgeo.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2013 2:57 AM
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] About "Interactive Map" patent application by
Apple Inc.
It was tl;dr, but the quick scan I did seems to have two things that I haven't
seen yet --
1. multi-touch: touch two points on a map and the best route is displayed
immediately;
2. dim everything else thereby highlighting only what one wants to look at.
There may be other new things in that long application.
Interestingly #2 above reminds me of line graphs that Manish Agarwala from
Berkeley had invented a long time ago that MapBlast incorporated in its routing
algorithms. Then MapBlast was bought out by MS maps outfit (I think it was
called MSN) and the feature existed for a while; and then that morphed into
Bing and it even existed in Bing Labs for a while and then seems to have
vanished. I used to love that line drawing feature. You could ask for a route
as a line drawing, and it would only highlight the most important thing, the
route, along with associated land marks, and dim everything else.
On Dec 20, 2013, at 11:03 PM, Simon (SPDBA) Greener
<si...@spatialdbadvisor.com> wrote:
> While I am not sure of the features in osgeo software to which Venkatesh
> refers, most of what appears in the patent application are natural
> improvements to existing map functionality that is common to any mapping
> software. I can't see Google letting this through without a fight. I agree
> with Venkatesh that an objection be lodged.
> Simon Greener
>
> On 21 Dec 2013 17:05, Venkatesh Raghavan <ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp>
> wrote:
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I think the OSGeo should express strong objection to the "Interactive Map"
>> patent filed by Apple on 17 Dec 2012 [1]. The contents of the patent [1]
>> describe features that OSGeo software already provides for over a decade.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Venka
>>
>> [1]
>> http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=%28715%2F771.CCLS.+AND+20131219.PD.%29&OS=ccl/715/771+and+pd/12/19/2013&RS=%28CCL/715/771+AND+PD/20131219%29
>> ..
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