Oh, good Lord, when the patent was filed, RunwayFinder was already online. Talk about prior art! This kind of abuse just boils my blood, especially when it involves this kind of penny-ante bullshit, the whole rent-seeking mentality of identifying a niche market that could really benefit from more open information and then trying to dominate it for chump change.
Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
11–20 of 89 posts
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#12knowing nothing about the company or history the line about lost revenue just made my blood boil. 22k unique visitors = 3.2 million in lost sales. 100% conversation.
There is so much fail going on here and that before you include the insanity of the 'patent'.
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#13The patent in question is http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7640098.html (source: http://news.priorsmart.com/stenbock-everson-v-runwayfinder-l... )
To summarize: it's a patent on the idea of overlaying a flight plan on a map using a website. The general case of this is drawing line-segments on a background, something every trivial paint program can do. This patent clearly fails the obviousness test.
It doesn't fail the obviousness test at the USPTO, because they seem not to employ people with ordinary skill in the art of anything related to software. At least, that's the most charitable explanation I can come up with.
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#14knowing nothing about the company or history the line about lost revenue just made my blood boil. 22k unique visitors = 3.2 million in lost sales. 100% conversation. There is so much fail going on here and that before you include the insanity of the 'patent'.
The line in question is a good example of law-fi literature:
"...that your website had 22,256 unique visitors in July 2010. Each visit represents a potential lost sale of our client’s patented invention at $149 per sale. This damage calculation exceeds $3.2 million per month in lost revenue."
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#15Oh, good Lord, when the patent was filed, RunwayFinder was already online . Talk about prior art! This kind of abuse just boils my blood, especially when it involves this kind of penny-ante bullshit, the whole rent-seeking mentality of identifying a niche market that could really benefit from more open information and then trying to dominate it for chump change.
I was somewhat taken aback to realize that for all the talk at EFF about their patent busting project (http://w2.eff.org/patent/wp.php), there doesn't seem to be any public database of bustable patents, suggested prior art, or documented harm done.
Chilling Effects has a patent section (http://www.chillingeffects.org/patent/) - but it also doesn't seem to have much of a database-type thing. And the same goes for PUBPAT (http://www.pubpat.org/).
Is there anything else out there I'm missing?
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#16Not only is the software patent outrageous but the lawyer math is totally baloney every visitor represents a lost sale of 149. ridiculous.
To be fair, it says "potential lost sale" :
Each visit represents a potential lost sale of our client’s patented invention at $149 per sale
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#17Is it possible for RunwayFinder to be hosted outside of the US? For example, if RunwayFinder is not premium (and not sold to the US), why can't the service be hosted in the UK or Europe where the patent is not valid?
You would hope so, in fact I have a business that I'm working on that has dumb obvious patents filed in the US but I'm a UK citizen.
I still reckon they'll come after me though, they love to waste time and think because they 'had an idea' that they own the rights.
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#18RunwayFinder says:
They won’t talk to me. Instead I’m stuck dealing with their lawyers who twice said that if RunwayFinder pays a license fee (would you like 10% or 20% of zero?) or removes the website that they will drop the lawsuit. Unfortunately, they are now reneging on that and posturing for more. They are claiming damages of $3.2M per month.
FlightPrep responds: http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-sh...
FlightPrep stands by its offer to grant a free-license to RunwayFinder to operate its website during this negotiation phase of our legal dispute. We are not asking RunwayFinder to shut down and in-fact are offering them a temporary free-pass at our technology in hopes that this gesture of goodwill will better enable both RunwayFinder and FlightPrep to constructively work toward a mutually beneficial long-term solution.
Doesn't absolve them of hefting lawsuits around, but there seems to be some sort of communication gap here...
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
To summarize: it's a patent on the idea of overlaying a flight plan on a map using a website. The general case of this is drawing line-segments on a background, something every trivial paint program can do. This patent clearly fails the obviousness test.
It doesn't fail the obviousness test at the USPTO, because they seem not to employ people with ordinary skill in the art of anything related to software. At least, that's the most charitable explanation I can come up with.
"Hmm, drawing a flight path on a map. I would need a ruler for that. Oh, this doesn't use a ruler? Must be very advanced technology. Ok."
Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder
#20Is RunwayFinder the open-source flight planner? If so, it seems anyone can just run it by itself? Is the source out there? I bet they wouldn't send lawsuits to all their potential customers.