FlightPrep online planning patent

JeffDG said:
'Cept in this case it was runwayfinder who was engaged in theft, and Flightprep simply asserted their rights not to be stolen from.
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RunwayFinder was not engaged in theft until the patent was issued in 2009. Altho the claim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" it's reasonable to believe that RunwayFinder was not aware of the final decision on the patent. And I'll guess that until FlightPrep started all this, RunwayFinder had no reason to believe it was in violation of the patent.
 
chucky said:
Actually, you mentioning Google Maps brings up an interesting point. The FlightPrep patent makes claims broader than flight planning. The patent lays claim to overlaying trip data of any sort on top of 'navigation charts', where the information is stored on a server and displayed on a client. From the patent:



I wonder who else they might potentially have basis to sue for patent infringement, if they got ambitious, and what sorts of conflicts with other patents might turn up if they did.
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Let's see...Boeing owns Jeppesen which has JetPlan and OpsControl. SAIC bought a number of the component companies from Capt Jack a number of years ago purely for the mapping software. Guess who's got the deepest pockets and the nastier lawyers? It's not gonna be FlightPrep.

However, Jepp has already pointed out its software does not infringe on the FlightPrep patent. A shame. Would have been fun to see Jepp v FlightPrep.
 
I do not know what has been going on at FlightPrep but I will speculate.

Somebody at FlightPlan gets an idea they think is patentable. They go to a patent attorney who tells them it looks promising. (What else would they tell them, this is how they make their money) FlightPlan sinks money into this but initially get turned down. Rather than give up (perhaps convinced by the attorneys that it is still worth pursuing) they continue to expend time and money in the hope that they will get rich. The patent comes through, now time to cash in. They shake a few trees but nothing falls out. They have probably already poured a lot of money in this, who knows how much more they can continue to spend. They should be demoralized that the poor guys folded and the rich guys blew them off.

All they have at this time is a questionable patent and a lot of bad publicity. Will they take AOPA and/or Jeppesen to court? I doubt it. AOPA and Jepp have probably already had some technical and legal experts review the case and think they will prevail. My guess is that FlightPlan will try to work some kind of deal to attempt to recoup some of the expense they have invested so far. I am not sure that Jepp has any incentive to buy FlightPlan, especially since they has ****ed off so many members of the GA community. Just as RunwayFinder could not afford to fight a battle with a much larger company, I doubt that FlightPlan can afford to take Jepp to court.

Hopefully this issue will be resolved before the good weather returns. I miss RF.
 
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Steve said:
I initially used FliteSoft in the DOS days and switched to Flitestar (a Stenbock product) after a few years, mainly due to FliteStar's improved screen graphics, and followed it to Jeppesen until Jepp demonstrated on several occasions their inability to provide timely and competent enduser support for the product.
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You noticed that too? About 4 years ago I sent 6 pages (with screen caps) of reproducible problems to the FliteStar product manager - no response at all, not even a "gee thanks for the comments but please understand that FliteStar is not a high-priority item around here". Zero. Nothing. Silence.

I had to call tech support last spring and got the distinct impression it's now being outsourced. During the conversation, I asked the other end of the phone if he & the rest of tech support were still on the 2nd floor or if they had moved into the building south of the airport. He had no idea what I was talking about.

For those who don't understand - Jepp HQ is on the west side of 17-35 of KAPA (Centennial) and the building is almost completely glass, hence everyone has great views of either the mountains or the airport. With the new marine products and such, Jepp has rented a building directly south of the airport and moved a large chunk of the people down there.

Jepp has a European facility (quite large in fact) but I haven't heard from friends working locally if EuroJepp is involved with FliteStar tech support.
 
Gary F said:
All they have at this time is a questionable patent and a lot of bad publicity. Will they take AOPA and/or Jeppesen to court? I doubt it. AOPA and Jepp have probably already had some technical and legal experts review the case and think they will prevail. .....I doubt that FlightPlan can afford to take Jepp to court.
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Just remember - Boeing owns Jepp. Other than the Feds or Lockheed Martin, who's got the [fill in the blank with whatever nouns you choose] to do battle?
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Here's the biggest thing I'm wondering about: a lot of times when going to an area I haven't visited before ("Hey Ted, can you bring some dogs to Roscoe, NY?") I liked the RunwayFinder feature of being able to type in a town name and then have it put me at that town on the sectional. Does anyone know if SkyVector (or any other flight planning tool) does the same thing?
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It's not free, and it's not online, but Destination Direct has that feature both in the VFR and IFR versions.
 
Gary F said:
I do not know what has been going on at FlightPrep but I will speculate.

Somebody at FlightPlan gets an idea they think is patentable. They go to a patent attorney who tells them it looks promising. (What else would they tell them, this is how they make their money)
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yup.

I saw a patent (and some correspondence) for a generator that attaches to the drive shaft of a vehicle such that the "natural motion" of the vehicle would be used to generate electricity (per the patent). The idea behind this (per inventor correspondence) was to recharge the batteries of your electric car as you drove to give you an electric vehicle with unlimited range. :loco:

You gotta wonder how much the dude was taken for by the attorney.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
yup.

I saw a patent (and some correspondence) for a generator that attaches to the drive shaft of a vehicle such that the "natural motion" of the vehicle would be used to generate electricity (per the patent). The idea behind this (per inventor correspondence) was to recharge the batteries of your electric car as you drove to give you an electric vehicle with unlimited range. :loco:

You gotta wonder how much the dude was taken for by the attorney.
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lol i thought of that idea too one time when i was on a walk when i was about 13 years old. then i called my uncle who is an electrician. Then I started to learn about perpetual motion and the laws of thermodynamics.
 
tonycondon said:
lol i thought of that idea too one time when i was on a walk when i was about 13 years old. then i called my uncle who is an electrician. Then I started to learn about perpetual motion and the laws of thermodynamics.
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same here...down to the calling the uncle who is the electrician and all. lol
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
yup.

I saw a patent (and some correspondence) for a generator that attaches to the drive shaft of a vehicle such that the "natural motion" of the vehicle would be used to generate electricity (per the patent). The idea behind this (per inventor correspondence) was to recharge the batteries of your electric car as you drove to give you an electric vehicle with unlimited range. :loco:

You gotta wonder how much the dude was taken for by the attorney.
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Hey, I too had the same idea when I was around 5 years old but I didn't know I could patent it. In any case someone (an uncle?) convinced me it wouldn't work too well so I never built the prototype even though I had accumulated most of the hardware (pedal car, washing machine motor, old defunct generator, etc).
 
lol what is the deal with Uncle's injecting reality into electric dreams?
 
tonycondon said:
lol what is the deal with Uncle's injecting reality into electric dreams?
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In my case, my Uncle was typically the one who smacked me upside the head and said "You're an idiot," so I stopped asking him questions. Perhaps that's the roles uncles play in our lives. ;)
 
murphey said:
What industry standards? ANSI or ISO citation, please.

There are defacto guidelines published by just about every major software house, (and they all read pretty much the same, the first I read was X11, then Apple's in 1985. SUN's was pretty much the entire package with global change Apple -> SUN. Mircrosoft's reads pretty much the same too, but certain widgets are in different places).
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Sorry missed this until now.

I was referring to Microsoft GUI Development Standards. Ok many other non-Microsoft applications don't strictly adhere to them when it comes to some less important functionality but there are some major deviations from them in Golden Eagle. One example is the Preferences window which is set to the top of the Z-Order so that it sits on top of other application windows. There are no menu shortcuts whatsoever, and the use of hotkeys is inconsistent. Many windows do not have control boxes, toolbars appear here and there, some windows are resizeable some are not. I have mentioned the use of different typefaces and fonts, many splitters are not resizeable, some resizeable windows do not have min/max/restore buttons. As I have said, I do not believe the software looks like a quality product and I would go as far as saying that, IMHO, it looks amateurish.
 
tonycondon said:
lol i thought of that idea too one time when i was on a walk when i was about 13 years old. then i called my uncle who is an electrician. Then I started to learn about perpetual motion and the laws of thermodynamics.
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Was this the 'farmer' uncle?

If so, he knew it wouldn't work because he had probably already tried it. ;)
 
Airnav.com might do what you need..

Click airports and then advanced search.. It will give you the results of all airports within a certain miles from the town.




Ted DuPuis said:
Here's the biggest thing I'm wondering about: a lot of times when going to an area I haven't visited before ("Hey Ted, can you bring some dogs to Roscoe, NY?") I liked the RunwayFinder feature of being able to type in a town name and then have it put me at that town on the sectional. Does anyone know if SkyVector (or any other flight planning tool) does the same thing?
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gismo said:
Hey, I too had the same idea when I was around 5 years old but I didn't know I could patent it. In any case someone (an uncle?) convinced me it wouldn't work too well so I never built the prototype even though I had accumulated most of the hardware (pedal car, washing machine motor, old defunct generator, etc).
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I was 6 when I thought of it and was telling everybody I wanted to be an engineer. "No. Not the choo-choo kind."

I figured out pretty quickly that it wouldn't work although I didn't know exactly why. I shussed that my bike light generator was too hard for a motor to turn.
 
CJones said:
Was this the 'farmer' uncle?

If so, he knew it wouldn't work because he had probably already tried it. ;)
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Nope, his brother is an electrician. Works at the airport in San Diego.
 
FlightPrep has another problem in my book. I downloaded the latest update last night and it won't install. Hangs in the middle of the process. Not sure what communications I'm going to send them. Fix it? Refund my money, goodbye? Lousy process has worked before...
 
I'd tell them you're leaving because they're killing the ability for little guys to innovate with their bogus patent.
 
Ghery said:
FlightPrep has another problem in my book. I downloaded the latest update last night and it won't install. Hangs in the middle of the process. Not sure what communications I'm going to send them. Fix it? Refund my money, goodbye? Lousy process has worked before...
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Phone them and tell them to spend more time developing and testing their own software and less time attacking good software that is provided by others! :wink2:
 
Everskyward said:
Does this mean that the sectionals on Foreflight are gone? Didn't they come from RunwayFinder? Seems like I just was looking at someone's Foreflight app on an iPad and the watermark on the charts said RunwayFinder.

http://blog.foreflight.com/2009/08/...wayfinder-partner-for-mobile-aviation-charts/
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No - ForeFlight will still have charts available. They're smart guys, pilots ya know, and they have backup systems. ;)

http://blog.foreflight.com/2010/12/16/a-statement-about-runwayfinder/

Excerpt:

RunwayFinder is and has been a valued collaborator with ForeFlight. Dave Parsons is a true innovator. Given our business relationship, some customers have inquired as to whether or not the current matters will affect ForeFlight’s ability to deliver updated charts to ForeFlight HD customers. The answer is simple: ForeFlight will continue to offer all our monthly updates, including downloads of VFR sectional and IFR enroute charts, to customers and expects no interruption of service.
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ChrisS said:
Phone them and tell them to spend more time developing and testing their own software and less time attacking good software that is provided by others! :wink2:
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A sign of a good software company is that they have more software developers and software engineers than lawyers.

Now that I think of it, that would be a good sign for a company... more actual workers than lawyers.
 
dmccormack said:
Bottom line: How has this action benefit the company?

My guess is -- not at all.
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The best scenario is that FlightPrep realizes that they have been taken for a ride by their lawyers and successfully sue them for legal malpractice. Everybody wins! Unfortunately, the legal profession has developed very effective safeguards for protecting themselves from the consequences of their misconduct.
 
ChrisS said:
The way the guy keeps saying 'OUR technology' makes me mad. The patent sucks and needs to be revoked.
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I concur.

The more I think about that interview, the more I believe that FP is trying to force their patent on the 'little' guys to set a precedent for when they go to court with the big guys. Notice how he kept saying that there was potential for anyone not making a profit to have a 'free' license - that serves no purpose to FP other than to have a number of 'licensed' sites sitting in their hip pocket as ammo in court. I just hope the 'big guys' decide to fight FP to the ground rather than take an easy route and buy them out.

Also, throughout the interview Neher never took responsibility for what his company is doing to the current collection of online flight planners (free or otherwise). All he would say was "the patent office thinks so". I'm not sure what angle he's trying to play with that, other than maybe trying to save face with potential customers -- "It's not MY fault we put the other guys out of business - it was the big bad evil patent office that FORCED us to enforce our patent. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do."
 
CJones said:
All he would say was "the patent office thinks so". I'm not sure what angle he's trying to play with that, other than maybe trying to save face with potential customers -- "It's not MY fault we put the other guys out of business - it was the big bad evil patent office that FORCED us to enforce our patent. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do."
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Except for one thing. As a patent holder you don't HAVE to enforce anything. You can just be like, "Yeah, I got a patent, but whatever."
 
EdFred said:
Except for one thing. As a patent holder you don't HAVE to enforce anything. You can just be like, "Yeah, I got a patent, but whatever."
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*I* know that, but it sounded like Neher was trying to present it as "I have no choice but to enforce my patent".
 
CJones said:
*I* know that, but it sounded like Neher was trying to present it as "I have no choice but to enforce my patent".
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He's an idiot. Oh n0z! He will probably sue me for libel!
 
> Flightprep sent Runwayfinder a letter informing them that they wanted to discuss a
> possible infringement.

Perhaps incorrect

According to RF, FP sent a letter saying they wanted RF to sign a NDA (without stating a why).
 
EdFred said:
Except for one thing. As a patent holder you don't HAVE to enforce anything. You can just be like, "Yeah, I got a patent, but whatever."
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If you intend to enforce your patent at one point, you have to defend it against infringement all the way along. If you dont, someone who infringes on it in the future will be able to use the cases where you failed to enforce as examples to limit the scope of your patent claim. In a situation like the current one, if you grant someone who technically infringes on your patent a license for a nominal fee, you have fulfilled your duty to defend the patent without creating the kind of bad blood we are looking at now.

To me this looks like a case of 'patent lawyer gone wild' meets 'stubborn techie who doesn't understand patent law'.
 
weilke said:
If you intend to enforce your patent at one point, you have to defend it against infringement all the way along. If you dont, someone who infringes on it in the future will be able to use the cases where you failed to enforce as examples to limit the scope of your patent claim. In a situation like the current one, if you grant someone who technically infringes on your patent a license for a nominal fee, you have fulfilled your duty to defend the patent without creating the kind of bad blood we are looking at now.

To me this looks like a case of 'patent lawyer gone wild' meets 'stubborn techie who doesn't understand patent law'.
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I think you're confusing areas of IP law here. What you said about enforcement is true with respect to trademarks, but not patents. You can leave a patent unenforced until the day before it expires and still enforce it with full validity.
 
JeffDG said:
I think you're confusing areas of IP law here. What you said about enforcement is true with respect to trademarks, but not patents. You can leave a patent unenforced until the day before it expires and still enforce it with full validity.
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Leaving it unenforced doesnt invalidate your patent per se if that is what you mean. It just reduces it to a nice framed piece of paper in an engineers office.
 
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