“A Delaware based company called Streetspace has launched a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple and ten other defendants including Google for violating their 2005 patent titled ‘Method and System for Providing Personalized Online Services and Advertisement in Public Spaces,'” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple. “As you could tell by the name of this patent, Streetspace believes that Apple’s iAd service is in clear violation of their patent, as is Apple’s Quattro Wireless, which is also named in the lawsuit.”
Purcher reports, “According to court documents, StreetSpace alleges that Apple has been and is infringing, contributing to infringement and/or inducing others to infringe one or more claims of patent 6,847,969 (also referred to as the ‘969 patent) literally and/or under the doctrine of equivalents by making, using, selling, importing and/or offering for sale a method and/or system for providing personalized and/or targeted online advertising services based on location, users’ profiles and/or usage history, such as iAds, and/or making, using, selling, importing and/or offering for sale the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch and other products and/or services that deliver or are capable of delivering targeted and/or personalized advertising services based on location, users’ profiles and/or usage history (collectively, ‘Apple’s Accused Products and Services.’)”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I haven’t read the article yet, but I can’t help but wonder how my iPad, iPhone and iPod screens are considered “Public Spaces?”
@JadisOne
I totally agree on your point!
They’re not. But that’s not the patent claim.
The claim is that the targeted ads are being determined based on the public space your iPad, iPhone and iPod currently are in.
So they should have included those highway signs that show where the food and lodging turnoff is?
Highway signs aren’t personalized now, are they?
After reading, I see that now. But thanks for the clarification nonetheless!
I can’t help but feel that we are beginning to see a pile-on by everyone that is even tangentially involved in electronic communication of any type. They are are all going to scour their patent portfolios, looking for anything that can be argued to be applicable, even if they are not being affected in any way by Apple’s presence or lack of presence, just in the hopes that someone will get lucky and set a precedent and ensure a matching payout for everyone with a lawsuit.
The old adage is, “sue the deep pockets”. In fair business practice, there are going to be winners and losers; that’s just the way it is. At the end of the Superbowl are we going to even up the score so no one has to go home a loser? What about American Idol? Are we going to give the first one voted off a record contract equal to the last one left standing? Most of the patents being asserted seem to be against products that Apple has had on the market for a number of years (or as is more common, everything Apple makes or sells), and this latest one is baffling. Why can’t Phillip K. DIck sue Streetspace for prior “art” for the location-based advertising such as in “Minority Report”. I would think it unlikely that Apple is using the same mechanism for location-based ads, simply the same concept. This falls into the silly “1-click” arena for me.
I guess I’m just becoming set against suing to get an easy pay-off. Apple’s suits against competitors are all about protect active research and shipping products. They certainly don’t need the money. Everyone else seems to be looking for an easy payoff or legal rationalization to continue to copy Apple’s work indiscriminately, or use the courts to hobble Apple’s success from its own efforts.
I love Apple – I love Apple products. But the whole Apple patent thing sort of scares me. It may be that I don’t understand the width and breath of what a patent does.
But when you patent glass stairs – does that mean HP can’t put glass stairs in their store? Does that mean I can’t put glass stairs in my business?
I hate to sound so simplistic – but it seems like (and I apologize if I sound foolish) – with the bankroll Apple has they could virtually patent the air we breath and then their competition would be sued for not falling over dead.
Please enlighten me on the process and explain how the multitude of Apple patents is good as opposed to VERY 1984.
From the patent
“In a preferred embodiment, the invention provides a computer network establishing a free online community providing personalized information conveniently accessible through a network of public access stations (hereinafter referred to herein as “stations” or “terminals”) and enabled by a personal system access card (e.g., smart card). The network of public access stations is sufficiently dense to provide users with a sense of ubiquity “in the streets.” The system terminals are compact and easy to use, and are preferably designed with a “look and feel” unlike existing computers or kiosks.
To use the network, the user simply inserts his or her personal system access card into a slot on a terminal. ”
Patents are to be SPECIFIC this patent is SPECIFIC to info KIOSKS and to which it specifically says requires a physical card to be inserted into to use. and that the location info is retrieved from the location that this KIOSK terminal is located at.
This is NOT the same as an app that you login to to determine your GPS location and then serve ads from stores nearby you. I do NOT consider my iPhone a part of “network of public access stations”
This patent was conceived before the prevalence of apps , the inventors did not envision this and had targeted the patent to INFO kiosks which they thought would be everywhere but as it is most INFO kiosks are still dumb terminals providing general info not personalized info.
Ridiculous tripe. Of the generic form of “and verily there shall be a beige box wherein lie all manner of spidery webs of metal, plastics, and sundry species of micro-electronics connected by the work of fairies and tiny goblins by which calculations shall be done and pictures shall be made. So shall it be.”
I call prior art – Minority Report (2002).