I hate patents. Not the kind of yelling-make-your-eyeballs-pop-out-of-your-head hate – I just don’t like them.
I read about this over the weekend and did a bit of thinking and my first thought was – No one has tried to patent GIS? There aren’t any current “Patent Holders” on it?
I guess not – which makes a lot of sense. I guess that why the Patent application from your friends at Megacorp Apple put some people in a bit of a tizzy (I think that may be the first time I’ve used tizzy in the blog). The focus (at least for me) has been here where people are posting prior art. Prior Art has consisted of the William Shatner narration of GRASS to the mention of MOSS.
So anyway – the highlights of what they are trying to patent:
A method for displaying a map on a computing device, comprising:
- Storing information to be displayed on the map in a memory of the computing device, the stored information comprising a plurality of different layers of information, wherein each layer contains a respective type of information;
- Displaying a map on a display of the computing device, the map comprising a plurality of the layers of information superimposed upon one another;
- In response to a user selection of a display mode corresponding to a topic of interest, displaying at least one layer containing information that is associated with the selected mode; and
- Enhancing the value of at least one display parameter for map features of each displayed layer that are associated with the selected mode, relative to a default value for the display parameter.
So yes – Apple is trying to patent what we mostly do everyday. I hope they fail miserably – and if you have prior art be sure to post it up at the patents section of stackexchange.
