Is ForeFlight the next to fight or fold?
Looks like they are receiving a bit of feedback:
http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/open-letter-regarding-our-online-flight.html
Wow. This reminds me of the JPI vs. Matronics deal from the late 90s. JPI may have won the battle, but to this day you don't see many RVs with their products in the panel (nor should you ever.) They've just alienated a large chunk of their potential customer base.
Wow. This reminds me of the JPI vs. Matronics deal from the late 90s. JPI may have won the battle, but to this day you don't see many RVs with their products in the panel (nor should you ever.) They've just alienated a large chunk of their potential customer base.
Wow. This reminds me of the JPI vs. Matronics deal from the late 90s. JPI may have won the battle, but to this day you don't see many RVs with their products in the panel (nor should you ever.) They've just alienated a large chunk of their potential customer base.
This is truly good news to have RunwayFinder staying online! WOO WHOO!!From RunwayFinder.com's blog http://blog.runwayfinder.com
Update 12/10/2010 2:30pm PST
A preliminary verbal agreement has been reached. Assuming we can work out the details over the next few days, RunwayFinder will remain online. I appreciate all of the messages of support. Sorry if I?m not able to respond to everybody personally. I?ll update this post as things progress.
Roger Stenbock has a JD after his name...
I agree with others who have suggested to contact the EFF. It may be very helpful.Sirs
I understand that your company is attacking the site: Runwayfinder.com
using dubious patent claims, as is so common with companies out to
litigate rather than innovate nowadays. I have read your open letter on
your site, and find your argument there unconvincing, to say the least.
The aviation community is small, and bullying behaviour such as this
will be sure to eventually find its way back to you. As the saying goes:
"What goes around, comes around".
Be assured, I will never do business, or support your business in any
way. I imagine that many others will follow suit. News of your actions
has spread far and wide already,
In disgust
J. Steve Cronje
Totally agree. I've been on both sides of this issue in a previous life, and I am convinced that software patents are a huge drain on the economy, and add no value whatsoever. The big guys strongly encourage their employees to patent every trivial snippet of code in an effort to increase the size of their patent portfolio, simply in order to have some defense in case they are attacked. If the ability to patent software were eliminated, huge numbers of hours could be refocused on productive activity....Software patents should be illegal (as they are in Europe). Plain and simple.
The ball of bad publicity is still rolling... Two of my friends and I will never give any business to FlightPrep. The info will be reposted on a foreign website as well.
Claim 1 of the patent is below in quotes:
"What is claimed is:
1. A process for generating a flight plan for preflight use by a pilot, comprising: accessing over a computer network from a client computer a Web page having a housekeeping frame and a selected composite travel navigation chart from among plural selected composite travel navigation charts stored at a server computer, each selected composite travel navigation chart including a travel chart merged with travel navigation waypoints, the travel navigation waypoints including radio navigation aids; downloading the Web page with the selected composite travel navigation chart from the server computer to the client computer as a two-dimensional array of map tiles that include up-to-date navigation data and cover an area over which a flight is to be planned; indicating X, Y coordinates of each of a plurality of navigation waypoints on the selected composite travel navigation chart at the client computer; sending the X, Y coordinates of each navigation waypoint to the housekeeping frame of the Web page; and drawing over the selected composite travel navigation chart on the client computer route line segments according to the X, Y coordinates, as instructed by housekeeping frame of the Web page, to generate a flight plan for preflight use by a pilot. "
I believe virtually all of the various on-line planners, including AOPA's for example, could be shown to be prior art in this (I'm not a patent lawyer...). Ever look at Google Earth? I believe I could even make an argument that my Garmin 430 does this, since the data is initially obtained over the internet.
The basic gist of this patent seems to be gathering information from a host computer and organizing it in a way to help with navigation planning on the client's computer.
Patents are very similar to laws - they are subject to challenge in court. Some are valid and involve real invention (like others have written on this thread already), and will stand up to the challenge in court. Many are not.
Will be interesting to follow this.