One Man's Battle With Patent Trolls 159
farrellj writes "Dovden Investments, labelled as a Patent Troll by many, got more than they bargained for when they went after Ottawa developer Larry Dunkelman. Mr. Dunkelman wrote BusBuddy, an app that takes GPS and scheduling data from OC Transpo, the local city bus service, and predicts when the bus you are waiting for will actually arrive. But when Dovden came along and asked for $10,000, as a 'licensing' fee, Dunkelman got angry, and decided to fight. 'They claim to have patented the method of using GPS location on vehicles to determine when they will arrive at a certain place,' Dunkelman said. 'This applies to buses, package delivery, airplanes, trains - any business that employs a fleet of vehicles in which they track their location to arrive at a certain place, is open to this patent troll.' Dunkelman hired an intellectual property lawyer and started chipping away at the company's claims. Dovden has since discontinued the suit and are now being chased by Dunkelman and his lawyer for legal costs."
Re:Basic Math... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Law Idea? (Score:4, Funny)
ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) has been used since long before we had computers.
Linking a patent to doing an ETA calculation based on location/vector data from a GPS is kind of like getting a patent for shoes if the cows the leather was made out of were grass fed.
Re:Back under the bridge, troll!! (Score:5, Funny)
I hope more developers have a spine as stiff as yours.
It's the only thing that can carry the load of his enormous balls.
Re:Basic Math... (Score:5, Funny)
Only relatively speaking. Nobody much cared whether they became tiger poop at 4P.M or 5P.M. but arriving at the climbable tree before the tiger was of great interest.
Re:Basic Math... (Score:4, Funny)
I was expecting, "There's an Ape for that"
Re:Back under the bridge, troll!! (Score:5, Funny)