NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Learn the stars, by phone
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2009 May 23, 11:52 -0700
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2009 May 23, 11:52 -0700
Don't know the iPhone answer to this one, Frank, but... I discussed the SkyScout patents with a bunch of (like me) gray-haired engineers over breakfast this morning. Several remarked that a number of 1950's and 1960's era guided missiles (and, come to think of it, the SR-71 Blackbird) used a form of celestial navigation where the system would acquire one or more stars and thereafter track the stars to infer the missile's position. Star acquisition could not take place until the missile was in the stratosphere and the sky went dark. So the guidance system had to do a coarse acquisition of the star(s) using a position estimate, and elevation and azimuth from a compass. Sounds a heck of a lot like the SkyScout. But once a patent is issued it's presumed valid and an "infringer" has an uphill fight to prove prior art. IANAL, too.... Lu frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com wrote: > The patent in the 7 million range is for some other device or system, but patent 6,366,212 does appear to be the basis for the SkyScout: > http://www.google.com/patents?id=VXwLAAAAEBAJ > > It has magnetic sensors, gravity/acceleration sensors, location/time input, a database of objects, and identify and find modes of operation. Beyond that, as expected for a patent, the details are rather vague. > > But here's a question: suppose company A, e.g. Apple, builds a device, presumably a smart mobile phone, that has the hardware features. This same company A includes software with its device which identifies buildings and landscape features (nothing astronomical and clearly outside the scope of the patent above). Can company B, e.g. me, write software which contains the database of astronomical objects and the identify/find features without infringing on the above patent? Presumably the patent lawyers for this invention maintain active searches for infringement and they're probably reading this right now :-) (am I kidding or not??). I'm inclined to think that it would not infringe, since their patent covers a purpose-built astronomical device, but, to use an old Internet/Usenet acronym, IANAL. > > -FER > PS: for the acronym: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
