Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

http://blog.runwayfinder.com/

by yock • 16 years ago

170 85 16 years ago

blog.runwayfinder.com

madars• 16 years ago

The patent in question is http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7640098.html (source: http://news.priorsmart.com/stenbock-everson-v-runwayfinder-l...)

Zak• 16 years ago

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.

mwg663• 16 years ago

I wonder if an appeal to a company such as Google might sponsor a reprisal? It seems relevant to many businesses interests.

pmiller2• 16 years ago

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.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 16 years ago

But the problem is that you can't summarize a legal document like this if you want to make complete sense of it. Every sentence has to be evaluated on its own merit.

Every patent I've read (IANAL, but I have read a number of patents over a couple of years of helping our lawyers challenge the USPTO) requires very careful reading to understand and evaluate all the claims.

jellicle• 16 years ago

I haven't read the patent in question for this case.

However, what is USUALLY the case with patents is that they are far narrower than what is claimed by the company or in the press. "Company patents pencils!" says the news article. When you read the patent you find that they've patented a very, very, very narrow use of pencils and that few, if any of the world's pencil uses are encompassed by the patent.

mwg663• 16 years ago

Is 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?

RyanONeill1970• 16 years ago

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.

mwg663• 16 years ago

Good for you. I would suggest that Runway Finder moves to Europe and let's the lawyers chase them.

megamark16• 16 years ago

Software patents are so infuriating! It's amazing how something that was designed to encourage creativity and innovation is effectively stopping innovation.

ccarpenterg• 16 years ago

For those (like me) who didn't know about RunwayFinder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3fTLYwM1d0

japaget• 16 years ago

For those who hate video or have youtube.com blocked, see CrunchBase at http://www.crunchbase.com/company/runwayfinder:

RunwayFinder is a flight planning resource for U.S. pilots, showing current weather conditions for airports in an area at a glance displayed on seamless sectional and terminal charts. In addition, routes, range circles, and temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) can be plotted.

regularfry• 16 years ago

Invoking the "every visitor/download/viewer represents a lost sale" argument? Seriously? Isn't that like Godwinning a legal exchange these days?

jrockway• 16 years ago

Suing someone is expensive and risky. If the "victim" can just be bossed around with scary numbers like "33 million dollars per month", then that's excellent; they get what they want without even having to work for it.

(Personally, that amount would be more than I could ever pay off in a lifetime, so I wouldn't worry about it. I would just join some teach-kids-to-read-in-Africa chairty, leave the world of material wealth behind forever, and never pay a dime of the settlement. Just to spite them.)

rbanffy• 16 years ago

> leave the world of material wealth behind forever

I would devote my life to finding a way to countersue them into non-existence as well as a way to disbar every lawyer involved in their offensive.

mkramlich• 16 years ago

I'd love to learn the trick to getting a 100% visitor conversion rate.

findm• 16 years ago

Not only is the software patent outrageous but the lawyer math is totally baloney every visitor represents a lost sale of 149. ridiculous.

patd• 16 years ago

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

aristidb• 16 years ago

Then it should at least be scaled by the probability of actually converting to a sale...

Vivtek2• 16 years ago

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.

Vivtek2• 16 years ago

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?

bld• 16 years ago

The US patent office has the Peer to Patent project for public comment on pending patent applications: http://www.peertopatent.org/

Looks like it's voluntary and applies to a limited number of patent applications, but it is a step in the right direction by the US patent office.

mmastrac• 16 years ago

EDIT: A comment below notes that this is a divisional patent and might have a date in 2001: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008772

On the other hand, there's lots of prior art for drawing flight information on maps. Here's a video game from the 1980's that I played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9i1drUg8c#t=2m15s

===========

It's easy to validate the claims that RunwayFinder forms prior art for the patent, assuming that RunwayFinder hasn't changed significantly since then:

First blog post:

http://blog.runwayfinder.com/2005/07/

Slow snapshot from archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051030165731/http://www.runwayf...

Patent filing date:

09/28/2005, via http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7640098.html

fingerprinter• 16 years ago

Ok, I read the claim, looked at the dates and have to say this...WTF?

When I was in college I worked on a system for a government affiliated agency doing research into flight simulators and other aviation related software. The exact project I worked on did this patents claim as base functionality before we did the hard work. This was 1996. That technology had been around for, oh, probably 4 years at this point.

I'm 100% sure that this software was not productized to be seen by the patent office (nor was a patent filed by this agency...), but this technology has existed in one form or another since the invention of networked computing and having computable aviation data.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 16 years ago

when the patent was filed, RunwayFinder was already online

Doesn't matter. Patents are awarded by first to invent not first to file.

aidenn0• 16 years ago

In the US that is true, but in Europe it's first to file

pierrefar• 16 years ago

Depends on where you are in the world. The European Patent Office explains:

Virtually every patent office in the world (including the EPO and the JPO) is based on a first-to-file system. ... The USPTO, however, is the only office to be based on a first-to-invent system, meaning that a patent is granted to the person who first conceived and practiced the invention, rather than to the person who first filed the invention with authorities.

http://www.epo.org/topics/patent-system/patents-around-the-w...

kragen5• 16 years ago

Even in the US with its unusual rule of first-to-invent, you can't file a patent on an invention that somebody else has also invented and disclosed to the public ("prior art").

dctoedt• 16 years ago

> Patents are awarded by first to invent not first to file.

The default value for date-of-invention is date-of-filing. An inventor who wants to establish an earlier date-of-invention has the burden of proof (and must provide corroborating evidence such as a dated- and witnessed lab notebook, because it's too easy for an inventor to "misremember").

(Yes, we're talking current U.S. law here; most other countries are indeed first-to-file.)

Additional reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_inve...

cduan• 16 years ago

This line in the patent:

  This is a divisional of application Ser. No. 09/919,672, filed Jul. 31, 2001.

means that it was effectively filed on that date, so you would need prior art predating 2001. (Though it might be more complicated than that, it depends on a couple of things.)

cromulent• 16 years ago

Also, FlightPrep refer to a 2004 review of online flight planners from the Aviation Consumer magazine. So, I would guess they date their invention before that.

http://www.flightprep.com/rootpage.php?page=aviationconsumer

moge• 16 years ago

knowing 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'.

cuchoperl• 16 years ago

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."

lutorm2• 16 years ago

Interesting how the "potential" got lost between lost sale and lost revenue...

og1• 16 years ago

The thing is it is actually worse than that. It is 100% conversion with the assumption that every single visitor would instead use accusing site instead of going to any of the other alternatives.

shrikant• 16 years ago

RunwayFinder 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...

gjm11• 16 years ago

What's the betting that the terms of that "free" licence involve some sort of admission of RunwayFinder's guilt, or of the validity of FlightPrep's patent?

tif2• 16 years ago

Doesn't the simple act of accepting a (free or otherwise) license from someone imply that that you accept their right to grant said license?

Both parties I'm sure are aware of this; it's simply posturing on FlightPrep's part with the hope that RunwayFinder will be dumb enough to accept it and thereby lose in the long run.

nphase• 16 years ago

From FlightPrep's blog [1]:

In spite of the foregoing, 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.

Constructively work toward a mutually beneficial long-term solution, eh? With patent enforcement? Sounds more like strong-arming RunwayFinder into a deal they wouldn't otherwise take to me.

[1] http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-sh...

jcromartie• 16 years ago

> a temporary free-pass at our technology

This makes me so angry... I just don't know how that thought can be honestly held in a sane mind.

cvos• 16 years ago

You are 1 day late, you missed this simple solution to retain your rights

http://hustlebear.com/2010/12/14/how-to-handle-lawyers-threa...

lutorm2• 16 years ago

Is 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.

soitgoes• 16 years ago

If it is open source, does the community provide any support to developers that find themselves in this situation? Perhaps the EFF or the legal team of an open source friendly company?

NelsonMinar• 16 years ago

This story is big news in the little world of general aviation. RunwayFinder was an excellent free product, well loved, and a lot of pilots are angry about it being bullied offline. RunwayFinder says they don't infringe. It seems likely to me, between the prior art, the obviousness of the patent, and the specificity of the patent claims (including language about using "housekeeping frames"). But they lack the means to defend themselves. I blogged some more analysis at http://www.somebits.com/weblog/aviation/flightprep-patent-76...

FlightPrep tried to go after the deep pockets in the industry, too, Jeppesen. Jepp's apparently blown them off: http://www.aopa.org/flightplanning/articles/2010/101214AOPA_...

blantonl• 16 years ago

FlightPrep, the patent owner, posted this response to the issue:

http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-sh...

jessriedel• 16 years ago

Definitely good to see the other side's response, but the post immediately prompts the question: what does Parsons stand to gain if he is shutting down RunwayFinder in order to "try this case in the court of public opinion" as FlightPrep claims (rather than simply to avoid getting sued over his hobby)?

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

Definitely good to see the other side's response and see what forked tongued baloney it is...

"... our good faith offer to provide RunwayFinder a free license during negotiation for a constructive resolution to our dispute and absent any demands by FlightPrep"

IANAL but, as others have said, "absent any demands" could be interpreted as "if you're willing to roll over and accept our utterly bogus patent.

"constructive" just as much meaning "profitable to our rent-seeking schemes"...

And somehow the pilots community is against software patents? I wouldn't imagine this an militant group of hacker. But after this experience, it seems they've learned a little bit...

ppruitt• 16 years ago

AvWeb interviewed Ross Neher from FlightPrep. At 5:02 they discuss the RunwayFinder suit:

http://www.avweb.com/podcast/podcast/AudioPodcast_FlightPrep...

As a student pilot, I hope this gets sorted out soon. RunwayFinder has the best VFR-sectional-over-Google-Maps interface of the available online tools. Skyvector.com is a close second, but they don't seamlessly stitch together charts (you must manually switch between them).

nene• 16 years ago

From the interview:

- How can you patent something like online flight planning? [--] Were you just first ones to think of patenting it?

- According to the Patent Office, that is correct.

The interviewer tries to squeeze information out from the man, but he just talks his way around the actual question, saying things like IANAL, It's in the Patent, the Patent is very specific, that's what the Patent Office says.

I wish the interviewer wasn't so soft with him.

sdizdar• 16 years ago

I believe that FlightPrep has a valid business plan. They have patent in order to prevent commoditization (i.e., giving away things for free) of their market. So they sue all free providers and if there is somebody with real money (like Jeppesen) they understand they cannot go after them.

I think this something each copmany should do when entering a niche market which can be easily commoditized.

dansingerman• 16 years ago

If you are in a market that can easily be commoditized, you need to innovate and provide extra value, not use legal loopholes to stifle innovation and competition.

The World would be a far worse place if [insert any commodity here] was patented and the owner of the patent could sell at a price of their choosing (and licence at a price of their choosing)

flipbrad3• 16 years ago

I supposed it could be a big boost for FOSS if the remedy for IP infringement wasn't damages calculated on expected (lost) sales, but an account for profits; so you'd hand over the profit you made from infringing this patent (rather than - hand over what we can convince a judge we would have made if we didn't have to compete with a cheaper product)

kragen5• 16 years ago

It would probably hurt FOSS in the short term, because it would essentially legalize not-for-profit copying — unlicensed copies of any proprietary software would be legal, and so we'd have well-curated and reputable repositories of AutoCAD, Microsoft Windows, OrCAD, Cisco IOS, and so on, perhaps even with enhancements and ports to new platforms. I imagine this is already the case in China.

jeffmould• 16 years ago

From the patent, in the "Background of Invention" section:

However, as will become obvious later, additional applications of this invention may also include the field of cartography, route planning for motor vehicles, marine vehicles and similar utilization.

So does this mean they could potentially go after MapQuest or Google Maps for providing route planning for motor vehicles as well?

acdha• 16 years ago

Standard rules for patent trolls: that'll happen later. They're going after little guys now so they can go into a case like that and claim that their patent must be good - just look at how many other companies paid up!

Splines• 16 years ago

Wouldn't it be the other way around? MapQuest was around well before 2001.

vegashacker• 16 years ago

How did FlightPrep come up with such an exact number for visitors to RunwayFinder (22,256)?

iheartcsharp2• 16 years ago

probably based on http://www.quantcast.com/runwayfinder.com

clavalle2• 16 years ago

So there are patent defense companies like Allied Security Trust, RPX and the Open Invention Network but it seems like these are for major players and/or have very limited scopes.

Is there anything similar out there for smaller businesses, particularly for those in the software industry?

Wouldn't it be nice to have an Open Invention Network type entity that can build up an arsenal to defend against these types of existential threats?

I could see paying a monthly 'licensing and services' premium that would go toward maintaining a patent portfolio, retaining defensive legal services and maintaining a database of prior art and other useful information that can be brought to bear in these kinds of situations.

I know there is regular patent insurance (I have never used it) but it seems more offensive rather than defensive in nature and is expensive.

iheartcsharp2• 16 years ago

apparently the infamous flightprep team http://i.imgur.com/v30tP.jpg

kj123452• 16 years ago

When a patent establishes a claim, and then says something like "Claim 19: The process of claim 18 further comprising overlaying a route line", does that mean the patent is narrowed to only things that include route lines, or does it still apply to systems with/without route lines? If it's not narrowed by the additional claims, what purpose do the additional claims serve?

ScottBurson• 16 years ago

The benefit of multiple claims is separability. In your example, claim 18 might be found invalid, but claim 19, since it requires an additional element, might still be valid. On the other hand, claim 18 might not be invalidated, in which case the patent is broader (and therefore more valuable) than if it had included only claim 19.

kj123452• 16 years ago

Interesting, so the most broad claim that gets the most press might not end up being the one that "counts", but on the other hand when someone says you have to read the whole patent to know how narrow it is that's not necessarily true either, since the most broad claim could be ruled valid.

nkurz• 16 years ago

Each of the claims is independent and additional. They are made so that it is possible for the patent examiner to approve the patent claim by claim with a more narrow scope, rather than rejecting it as a whole. From the applicant's point of view, the best case is that all claims are approved, but the usual goal is to write a series of increasingly narrower claims so that at least something gets approved. If nothing is rejected, you probably have not made it broad enough. Having a more narrow scope may also determine in a law suit whether something is infringing: if you have an explicit claim, it's more clearly infringing.

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

Somebody get fuckpatenttrolls.com (or something like that) and create a site for us to be informed of such evildoers.

Boycott is the only weapon we have to fight them.

Empedocles99• 16 years ago

Premise: a) Many (most?) small software outfits, and software developers don't agree that software should be patentable.

b) Some of us would be willing to pay an insurance premium against patent trolls

Proposal: Form an organization (or convince an existing one like the EFF) funded (donations, I'd presume) by all of us to:

a) Lobby for changes to to the patent process and law.

b) Aggressively challenge obvious software patents as being obvious, or using prior art.

c) Serve as a communal defense fund/legal help for small businesses against patent trolls.

d) Maintain a community database of bad patents and potential prior art (to be used in defensive or offensive legal actions)

flipbrad3• 16 years ago

you can presumably purchase before-the-event insurance anyhow. There just isn't a big market. But can you seriously EFF/etc to be that insurance, and have any money left over to lobby government (have you any idea what financial scale we are talking about? in the UK, the pro-patent lobby just got our government to reduce corporation tax on patent-derived income from 37.5% to 10% ! that takes some serious lobby clout) ?

clavalle2• 16 years ago

There are over a million software engineers and computer programmers in the U.S. Say, 15% were convinced to give $30 a month (or their employers). That would be over 50 million a year for operations. That is not including other donations that would be solicited, or fees payed by other interested parties such as hardware manufacturers, venture capitalists and the like.

Now will $50 mil. be the death knell for the pro software patent lobby? No, there are big companies with very deep pockets that would fund the other side well, but it is a fine start.

Of course, my hope would be that the $50 mil. would mostly go to crushing trolls in court, sucking up tasty patents, building and maintaining a solid resource of precedent and prior art in this area and setting good precedent and leave the bulk of the lobbying to donations above and beyond the collected fees.

raymondh• 16 years ago

If the SAP/Oracle case is any guide, then even having a well-funded defense won't save you from massive losses.

conorh• 16 years ago

Reading through the timeline it seems like the chose to enforce their (in my opinion, bogus) patent in a very agressive way. Don't like this company at all.

nick24862486• 16 years ago

This is very sad. I would be glad if we can have site to expose those patent trolls. Browser plugin which automatically displays "Those are patent abusers, don't visit!" when you try to visit given url's would be even better. Maybe that would build some pressure to not use abusive claims.

ams6110• 16 years ago

Well you could try the advice posted yesterday and tell them to eat shit and fuck off. Maybe they are bluffing.

aces• 16 years ago

There was an article on here recently about how in general the more agressive the lawyer is, the less case they have. Potentially the lawyer is bluffing. It a tragedy, that you have to shut down. This sort of thing makes me wonder if there is a market for a decentralized webserver. Sort of a bittorrent but for web pages that would allow you to get around some of the patent claims--in a way. The profit value of this would be that as traffic increased on site the added users would handle some of the load. Essentially auto scaling without the added hardware costs. Potential issues to get over is how to get the browsers to support such a thing. Could websockets or even existing JSONP work through it?

Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

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