Patent wars have been going on forever, and why not as after all the whole process is faulty and unmanageable. I remember a while ago now when a small NZ GIS integrator managed to patent a fundamental GIS desktop feature that had been used by all vendor products forever. I don't remember exactly what it was, but something in the level of labeling features.
At the time it was clear that patenting Organisations did not check the real life scenarios well enough, basically not enough resources to do that. And if it was a problem 15 years ago, you can guess it is a lot worse now.
But the real problem is not who wins or looses parent war and who has to pay. The problem is fragmented UI for touch screens. Let me explain: if you define your geospatial application interface for mouse today, it is pretty easy; across all devices there are de-facto standards on what happens when you use click, right-click, double-click etc on map.
I was recently involved to define an UI for touch screen using all the common-sense features that people are familiar with. For example zoom in was pinch-screen, two fingers to pan etc. if you are writing a HTML5 app that works for all devices, a unified interface makes a lot of sense.
So then let me drop the bomb on this; one of the patents that Apple now are the sole users of is pinch-zoom. In other words you can only use this feature on Apple devices! Samsung and others now need to go and find an alternative which they are due to patent heavily.
You can see where this is going can't you? Before we know it while UI us fragmented, no de-facto standards anywhere. Bummer !
At the time it was clear that patenting Organisations did not check the real life scenarios well enough, basically not enough resources to do that. And if it was a problem 15 years ago, you can guess it is a lot worse now.
But the real problem is not who wins or looses parent war and who has to pay. The problem is fragmented UI for touch screens. Let me explain: if you define your geospatial application interface for mouse today, it is pretty easy; across all devices there are de-facto standards on what happens when you use click, right-click, double-click etc on map.
I was recently involved to define an UI for touch screen using all the common-sense features that people are familiar with. For example zoom in was pinch-screen, two fingers to pan etc. if you are writing a HTML5 app that works for all devices, a unified interface makes a lot of sense.
So then let me drop the bomb on this; one of the patents that Apple now are the sole users of is pinch-zoom. In other words you can only use this feature on Apple devices! Samsung and others now need to go and find an alternative which they are due to patent heavily.
You can see where this is going can't you? Before we know it while UI us fragmented, no de-facto standards anywhere. Bummer !