Boingo Awarded a Patent For Hotspot Access 105
Boingo has scored a patent for accessing a Wi-Fi hotspot by a mobile device. The patent, no. 7,483,984, was issued in January, but Boingo only started talking about it recently. The patent application was filed in December 2002. According to the company, the methods covered by the patent include: "...accessing wireless carrier networks by mobile computing devices, where a client software application hosted by the device accesses carrier networks using wireless access points. For example, when a computer — or netbook, smartphone or any other Wi-Fi-enabled device — is in a location where there are multiple signals, the patented technology looks at each signal and alerts the user which signal will work, showing the signal as an understandable name and ID for the user.The patent covers all wireless technologies and spectrums, as well as any mobile device that access wireless hotspots." The company is not saying anything about whether or how they will attempt to wield this patent.
They Mention Wi-Fi In Their Patent (Score:1, Interesting)
Since they mention Wi-Fi in their patent doesn't the patent invalidate itself by itself referring to prior art?
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Job Frenzy [adaptiveapp.com]
Re:Dead on arrival... (Score:4, Interesting)
Haven't GSM phones done this for ages when roaming? The phone may be in range of multiple towers from multiple providers, yet it only gives a list of providers (not the individual towers).
Impossible (Score:4, Interesting)
The patent seems to be related to the mobile device specifically accessing a "hot-spot". Just how the heck are they supposed to license this and make money?
Any mobile device can connect up to wireless that does not necessarily qualify as a hotspot. So how can you force a mobile phone manufacturer, a netbook manufacturer, a laptop manufacturer, etc. to pay royalties when there is no guarantee that the device will ever be used to access a hotspot? I understand they have a patent, but I don't find that reasonable.
To me it would be the same as getting a patent on the act of juicing oranges and then asking royalties from every single juice machine manufacturer with the claim, "well it could be used to juice oranges".
They could go after the people hosting wireless hotspots that the devices would be accessing or the access point manufacturers, but the claim is on the client device......
Re:Impossible (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm guessing they are not interested in licensing.
There are legal theories that a patentee may use to cover the situations you discuss: contributory infringement and induced infringement. Wikipedia has a brief mention. [wikipedia.org].
Tear it down (Score:5, Interesting)
The US Patent Office should be eliminated. It doesn't serve its intended purpose, and the way patents are reviewed indicates that the people examining them either don't often have a clue on what is obvious or non-obvious, or that there is massive corruption and the finances of the examiners need forensic investigation.
I think there are way to many lawsuits out there, usually motivated by greed, but is it possible for people to launch a class action lawsuit to simply stop an entity from operating?
It seems like the concept of free market economy and all-encompassing corporate patents are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Re:Dead on arrival... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the common carrier can be simply construed as the internet as proxied by ISPs. Identifiers can simply be IP addresses - when viewed as a tuple (ap, ip) the ips are unique. Note that it does not logically matter which ap or isp is chosen for a network connection. My laptop certainly maintains a list (database) of access points, and attendant information (passwords).
I can pick one from the list, or one will be automatically chosen.
The iPhone is even more interesting here; it even switches between cellular and wifi.
As far as I can tell, this patent locks up everything currently in play for wifi - Linux NetworkManager conflicts, as does the iPhone, and, I believe Windows.
iwconfig and ifconfig in Linux would NOT conflict, but, outside of some techies, no one uses that layer directly. Private networks are also not affected.
The most interesting question is: who should pay? The invention doesn't come together until a number of elements are combined - the ap, a common network, a connection list. Remove any one of these elements, and (from my read) the invention ceases to exist. We won't be getting rid of the common network, so it will be "client side" payouts -- either on the aps, or the software that remembers aps. aps themselves don't infringe, so the only item left is the software that maintains and manages the connection list. NetworkManager.
My response to that? They would be serious asshats to actually USE this patent.