Oh, patents, you never stop slowing down innovation. Jeff Roberts at Paid Content is reporting that a Florida company called PanoMap is claiming that both Apple and Google are violating its patent with the implementation of Street View.
PanoMap claims that both Apple and Google should pay triple damages because they knew about the patent but ignored it. As proof, the company claims that Apple visited a website that displayed the patent in 2007 while Google cited the ‘529 patent in a recent patent application of its own. Although Google and Apple are rivals, the latter includes Google’s popular mapping technology with its devices. The Street View function of Google Maps allows users to see a photograph of locations like houses or street corners.
This is just another example of how obnoxious the patent system is at this point. Apple, just like every major company, uses the system for their own benefit, but everyone except lawyers are willing to admit that something is wrong with the system at this point.
Are you getting sick and tired of watching companies, big and small, slap fight their way through court? Sound off in the comment section below this post. We’d love to hear a solution that is better than the current system. Frankly, it probably wouldn’t require much effort to come up with one.PanoMap v Apple
Source: Paid Content
