I think the federal government would disagree with assertions of private ownership of the GPS system....
Which is why the patent at issue does not claim ownership of GPS. It claims ownership of a different method of ___location detection, somewhat similar to the non-GPS system that Google and Apple use.
This article has been flagged for being incorrect and linkbaity. Who would have thought that the quality of GigaOm would actually fall below that of PandoDaily?
It covers a system for sharing information about users (e.g. ___location, how to contact them) who have GPS-equipped phones that transmit ___location and some other information back to a central server. There's also some tomfoolery in there about how the server needs to store data for different users at different memory locations, but that's not particularly relevant or interesting, and frankly looks like obscurantist padding meant to make the patent seem more specific and novel than it really is.
It does seem to cover what Foursquare does. Of course, it does this by being obvious, and not in any way advancing the state of the art. I can't think of any good argument for why the patent system should cover things like this, and yet here it is.
EDIT: The other patent is similarly obvious. It's short, so check out the claims:
Guys, I clearly said the article does not claim ownership of GPS. It can't, because the federal government was using GPS for that for a decade or two before the system was opened up to the private.
What is covered by the patent is other aspects of ___location tracking, specifically at issue here, the use of a central database to store detected locations and to make use of detected locations for other purposes. In this context, the patent claims any form of geo-___location technology which is used to contribute to that database.
Which is why the patent at issue does not claim ownership of GPS. It claims ownership of a different method of ___location detection, somewhat similar to the non-GPS system that Google and Apple use.
This article has been flagged for being incorrect and linkbaity. Who would have thought that the quality of GigaOm would actually fall below that of PandoDaily?