IP-Based Location Determination Patented

little1973 writes "Digital Envoy recived patent 6,757,740 for determining, collecting and using geographic locations of Internet users. I didn't know a patent could be obtained for a simple traceroute and some lookups in a DB." The patent talks about a bit more than this (such as assigning confidence levels to bits of the looked-up information), but the long list of referenced previous patents reminds me of the saying "If you copy one person, it's plagiarism; if you copy a dozen, it's research."

Prior art

[SpaceLifeForm]

I know web-sites having been doing this long ago. Can't find one at the moment, but this is definitely not new.

Re:Prior art

[BillyBlaze]

First Google hit: http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm [geobytes.com]

That one has a database, but it doesn't rely on whois data, so it may not infringe the patent. Trying again...

http://www.visualware.com/personal/products/visual route/index.html [visualware.com]

Click on live trial and give your email. It seems almost identical to the patent - it runs a traceroute and figures out where each hop is. I have no idea how old it is, or whether it's related to Digital Envoy, though.

Re:Prior art

[the eric conspiracy]

Can't find one at the moment, but this is definitely not new.

The priority date of the original filing is back in 1999 so you have to find prior art before that.

Re:Prior art

[SpaceLifeForm]

I recall such sites in the early 90s, around 1994. The problem is that the sites likely do not exist any longer.

Re:Prior art

[vsync64]

What, like xtraceroute [chalmers.se]?

First public release! (8-May-01998)

Re:Prior art

[bradkittenbrink]

Even better than that, xtraceroute implements RFC 1876 [ohio-state.edu] dating back to 1996.

Re:Prior art - here's mine from a year+ ago ..

[xmas2003]

I've had a IP to location tool [komar.org] on my personal web site [komar.org] for over a year - it uses one of the more simpler ways of determining location (use the Perl Module Geo::IPfree [cpan.org] ... looks like the 0.1 release for that was 2002) so does this mean that my use of that module means I'm in violation of the patent ... or is the Perl Module itself in violation?

it certainly seems like....

[zogger]

...anyone trying to determine anything relating to the internet and IP addresses, would have to notice there are things called DNS and search engines activated by keyword search algorithyms. This, a clever lawyer might say, is "publication in a peer journal", if it can be proven that the search terms would lead to the prior art site readily. If it's published on the web, it's published. If it's easily found, it's easily found. The web contains your peers as a subset of everyone. You have to search in a brti

Re:Prior art - here's mine from a year+ ago ..

[Stephen Samuel]

Talk to the person who wrote the module, and ask him/her where they got the idea for the module... There may be prior art there yet! The module may just be the formalization of an old idea.

Re:Prior art

[dtfinch]

I've seen more than one from before 99, based on my limited understanding of the patent (haven't read it in full).

Re:Prior art

[Jesrad]

The ads on our website use geolocation, there are many competing solutions, some free and some payware (subscriptions to a monthly updated DB).

Re:Prior art

[Short Circuit]

A program I used to use called Neotrace [networkingfiles.com] does this...Not with the confidence ratings, though.

It works!

[Smallpond]

I traced a spammer to his exact location using the information provided in the database:

1060 W. Addison St.
Chicago, Illinois

Re:It works!

[drawfour]

Dude, that's cool! I'm going to take theirs one step further and retrieve phone numbers associated with that person as well. My new patent will make me RICH! Check out what whitespages.com [whitepages.com] has to say about that address. :)

Hope the Cubs weren't soliciting you.

Re:It works!

[Alsee]

Yep! And his (or her) phone number is 867-5309!

-

I'm going to patent the hammer and chisel

[max born]

A system collects the geographic information and allows web sites or other entities to request the geographic location of their visitors. The database of geographic locations may be stored in a central location or, alternatively, may be at least partially located at the web site.

Sounds like a patent on keeping geographical IP addresses in a database. These folks are truly great "inventors". Thanks to the PO for promoting the useful arts and sciences. Without such exclusive rights, nothing would get inven

Re:I'm going to patent the hammer and chisel

[Stephen Samuel]

Can we just sue the PTO on the basis of unconstitutionality?? The granting of patents and copyrights is supposed to promote the growth of the arts and sciences, but the current regime is doing precisely the opposite. By allowing such stupid and obvious patents on a regular basis, they're creating an innovation minefield and discouraging investment in anything other than patent squatting.

Surfer, Map Thyself!

[Feztaa]

There's some guy who has that link in his sig, it links to his own geo-location thingo. Where is he when you need him?

Re:Surfer, Map Thyself!

[Motherfucking Shit]

There's some guy who has that link in his sig, it links to his own geo-location thingo. Where is he when you need him?

I believe you're speaking of Space cowboy [slashdot.org]. His service is located at http://hostip.info [hostip.info]. Unfortunately it's too recent to qualify as prior art for this patent.

Prior Art

[Metasquares]

There were at least two systems set up that did this beforehand: IP2Geo and Net2Geo. I did all sorts of research on this because I'm very close to releasing an application that looks up geographic information based upon IP.

plagiarism, indeed

[ChipMonk]

The only plag^H^H^H^Hresearch in this case, however, is to figure out how to patent stuff with lots of obvious prior art.

Re:plagiarism, indeed

[ChipMonk]

Well, this subsequent Slashdot story [slashdot.org] says you need to do it at least 3 times.

i published a paper on this in 1996

[convolvatron]

"Visualizing the Global Topology of the MBone", Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, pp. 85-92, Munzner, Hoffman, Claffy, Fenner