Good morning Andrea,
Not off-topic at all if you ask me.
I didn't look up the patents that you referred to, but FYI there is a
Wiki page where we document prior art and other facts related to
webmapping patent claims:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Web_Mapping_Patents
Hopefully you find some info in there that can help you, and I'd invite
you to update the page with whatever relevant info that you find
relating to those other patents.
Regards
Daniel
On 2016-04-08 9:09 AM, andrea antonello wrote:
Dear all,
this might be slightly off-topic (I think not).
In a couple of companies a few years ago we developed a fleet tracking
software all based on open source software.
The mobile android part is basically a customization of geopaparazzi,
the server side base on the usual open webmapping stuff (bare with me on
this oversemplification).
The project had some internal issues and we never really came to an
official release, even if the website went online to be used for
commercial purposes.
A few weeks ago we were contacted by one of those "innovating" companies
that do nothing else than buying patents and search project from which
they can gather money.
Needless to say that our project has been targeted.
HydroloGIS, our company, is part of the Open Invention Network, so we
first asked them for support. It is obvious that a small company as ours
gets scared quickly from a letter claiming patent infringement and
possible litigations.
We are now trying to document the (very superficial) claims we got (like
having a map - Openstreetmap - visualized on a device), as OIN suggested
us to. One more thing we have been asked, is to gather as many articles,
scientific or not, that deal with what the patent claims and that might
be dated before the patent's date (patent has been filed in 09/2000 and
granted in 11/2007).
I know it is a long shot, but maybe some of you have already had to do
with this and might be able to help, send some references.
For reference the patents are:
US 6754580 B1
EP 1218697 B1
Basically it is a system to track vehicles made up of a client (mobile
device) and a server application.
If you have papers, articles, anything related to that at hand, please
let me know.
Thanks for any help,
Cheers,
Andrea
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Daniel Morissette
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T: +1 418-696-5056 #201
http://evouala.com/ - Location Intelligence Made Easy
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