Apple Patent Envisions Tracking People In Real Time

I could be wrong but I think this will end up being used and abused by law enforcement and hackers alike.

Granted to Apple on Tuesday by the US Patent and Trademark Office, a patent called "Sharing location information among devices" describes a process that would let you view a visual representation of the path taken by another person using a mobile device as a way of following that person's entire journey.

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That's pretty much, law enforcement, hackers, data miner and reseller's wet dream right there.

Yeah, there is nothing good that can come of this for the public, but businesses and government will love it.

So Apple wants to patent the Glympse App?
Why is there always so much prior art to Apple's patent applications?

Yakk said:

That's pretty much, law enforcement, hackers, data miner and reseller's wet dream right there.

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CarrierIQ in Android already gives all of those groups this data and more.

Ordeith said:

So Apple wants to patent the Glympse App?
Why is there always so much prior art to Apple's patent applications?

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because companies patent implementation and not mere ideas.
things that look alike on the surface need to have their implementation patented in order to protect the process.

you'd have to read the technical details of the patents you're thinking about to compare and scrutinize them. I doubt anyone commenting in this thread is going to take the time to do it unless they have a background in IP and/or a strong interest in the topic because it's really uninteresting technical stuff with a rabbit hole of previous patents that you have to dig down through (relevant patents are cited within the application, they're not unknown) to really see why the patent needs granting.

Ordeith said:

CarrierIQ in Android already gives all of those groups this data and more.

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Yes of course they do, but now they might also have to pay Apple a royalty to be able to track you? Or maybe Apple is integrating tracking even deeper into iOS.

Ordeith said:

So Apple wants to patent the Glympse App?
Why is there always so much prior art to Apple's patent applications?

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And my Bicycling App, Strava, it shows my route, tracks my speed along the way, all kinds of shit, and shares it out so my friends can see how I'm doing.

mope54 said:

because companies patent implementation and not mere ideas.
things that look alike on the surface need to have their implementation patented in order to protect the process.

you'd have to read the technical details of the patents you're thinking about to compare and scrutinize them. I doubt anyone commenting in this thread is going to take the time to do it unless they have a background in IP and/or a strong interest in the topic because it's really uninteresting technical stuff with a rabbit hole of previous patents that you have to dig down through (relevant patents are cited within the application, they're not unknown) to really see why the patent needs granting.

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They aren't that long and are generally easy to read. What's funny is the Apple one seems to be a combination of the 4 they cited as similar. I don't see anything new or novel. I did notice they slipped in face recognition to authenticate a user as one of their claims but didn't cite any other patents already out on that technology.

Should not have been approved as is. They did a halfass job with their research.

Does anyone know when Apple will patent something original.

It is a come rob me I'm gone app.

Megalith said:

Does anyone know when Apple will patent something original.

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No one ever patents something "original" in the sense you seem to be implying.

Everything "invented" is derived from processes and previous implementations. Just like other scientific endeavors, developments are iterative.

Just like Spidey329 seems to be confused about the patent process or what "inventors" do.
He cites Apple's reliance on the combination of four previous patents and that they "slipped in face recognition to authenticate a user" and then concludes they didn't do anything "novel."

Combining those four previous four patents with facial recognition is the new implementation they wanted to protect.

If I came up with a way to differentiate iris pigmentation from shape/size and incorporate it into their recognition routine, that would be something I could, should, and would patent. I don't have to "invent" an actual tool for measuring those factors in order to use them in my implementation.

I don't understand why you guys think that every scientific or technological advancement requires each and every step of the process being created whole cloth from nothing as if companies start from scratch every time they design something. We'd be reinventing the wheel every time we wanted to put a new feature on a car, for example. It's not how patents work, it's not how science works, it's not how normal conversations work either. You don't, for example, start each conversation introducing yourself all over again and going over every single detail of all the last conversations before you ask someone how they're doing

Ordeith said:

CarrierIQ in Android already gives all of those groups this data and more.

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With respect to Android, CarrierIQ isn't necessary as the app permissions on most of the baked in Google apps already give those programs complete access to the handset's data and send it back home to Google. Relevant agencies can just ask Google for those records.