San Francisco – As the legal battle continues between Silicon Valley tech titans, with a multitude of court cases popping up around the world. According to tech site PaidContent, a lawsuit is slammed at Google’s Street View feature and Apple devices that use it, claiming infringement of a patent held by a Florida company with no Web site.
Both the tech entities Google and Apple are in a worldwide dispute over smartphone patents, but the current scenario compels them to cooperate long enough to fight a common enemy–a Florida firm that says both tech giants are infringing its mapping technology.
In a complaint filed last week in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Florida-based PanoMap Technologies has sued the duo Apple and Google for infringing on its patent covering the the 3D panorama mode found in the Street View feature in Google Maps app on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
The lawsuit (pdf), discovered by PaidContent, claims that both companies willfully infringed on U.S. Patent No. 6,563,529, which was originally filed by Jerry Jongerius in October 1999 and awarded in 2003. The company also alleges that patent addresses an “interactive system for displaying detailed view and direction in panoramic images.” In the suit, that is described as the Street View feature, the one that allows users see 3D imagery of the street, as captured through Google’s Street View camera system.
Here is the abstract:
“A method and system for indicating the camera position, direction, and field of view in a map or panoramic image comprises a map image window which displays a map or panoramic image of the site to be studied (house, apartment, city, etc.). A detailed view window displays a portion of the map image, taken from a point in the site. A highlighted sector in the map image represents the viewing position, direction, and field of view that the detailed view window displays. When the user changes the field of view in the detailed view window, the highlighted sector in the map image changes in synchronism. The resulting interactive windows allow a person to easily and quickly view and understand the field of view, position, and direction of the image being displayed in the detail view window.”
Google’s Street View technology running on an iPad. (Credit: Apple)
Strengthening its claims, as for Apple, PanoMap says the company accessed Duckware.com, a business operated by Jongerius that both shows off and licenses a panoramic image viewer program called PMVR, on July 8, 2007. PanoMap is demanding that both Apple and Google should pay triple damages because they were aware 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.
Representatives from Google and Apple declined to comment on the suit. Also, lawyers for PanoMap did not reply to a request asking if their client actually makes mapping technology or if it is just a shell company supported by investors who fund patent lawsuits.
Strangely though, a search for “PanoMap” reveals the name is linked to an Atlanta-based CSA Inc., which makes laser scanning technology. However, an executive from CSA wrote to PaidContent that “CSA owns the PanoMap mark, but is not suing GOOGLE/APPLE. Incidentally, CSA has filed a patent application a year ago – technology we have been developing for a decade or so.”
If this is genuine, the new lawsuit could raise a strange situation where a shell company is using the trademarked name of a real company to sue other companies.
A copy of the lawsuit is below:
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