Location, location, location

Our class on Mobile and LBS came at an appropriate time, as I am also taking a class called “Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs & Managers” (IPEM) in which a recent guest speaker shared his insights on Apple’s experience with Location-based Services.

As you may have read, the US Patent and Trademark Office on October 16^th, 2012 published a series of 32 newly-granted patents secured by Apple. One of these was US 8,290,513 B2, first filed on Feb 25, 2008.

Among other things, the patent claims:

“A method comprising:

·       detecting a picture taking event on a device;

·       determining a current geographic location of the device;

·       obtaining, from a server, location based information based on the determined current geographic location and the picture taking event,

·       location-based information comprising information corresponding to one or more businesses located in a vicinity of the determined current geographic location, the one or more businesses including a business offering photo processing services;

·       filtering the location-base information, including filtering out a business whose hours of operation do not overlap with a current time;

·       providing the filtered location-based information for display on the device.”

What can we learn from this?

According to our IPEM guest speaker, a Professor of computer science professor at Columbia and IP expert, this patent is a key part of Apple’s strategy to monopolize the LBS market. It is true that providing photo-based search is the key innovation of the patent, but the strategy behind it was to prevent local businesses from using competitor services.  In essence, Apple is using the photo-based search to capture market share and using the patent claims to create a competitive barrier. It’s was an interesting example of how a company is careful to narrow the claims sufficiently but not too much.

 http://www.google.com/patents/US8290513