‘The Billion Dollar Code’: Developers Who Sued Over Google Earth Algorithm

Post by SilicaAndPina » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 11:11 AM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #59

I largely skimmed through the series, but the way this portrays the german hacker scene while simultaneously appearing to advocate for software patents feels very strange. The series portrays these guys as the heroes, but in reality they just seem to be patent trolls who fortunately lost. A lot of really cool retro tech stuff to spot though, they certainly weren’t lazy with this even if the politics of it seem weird.

Post by SilicaAndPina » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 11:13 AM UTC

jebronie wrote: post #58

rob74 wrote: post #6

Er... it's not entirely clear, but apparently the infringement claim was based on "the ability to zoom from the globe graphic all the way down to a particular neighborhood"?! So something a mildly talented programmer could come up with in (generously estimated) 1-2 days tops? And sure it looks cool, but claiming this animation is original enough to be patentable is stretching it a bit...

So easy! Why didn't they just import it into Unity???!!! Thats you.