News
- 17.11.2011 - Apple gets killer location services patent
Apple has raised bludgeoning competitors with patents on key technologies to a fine art. A reissue of a patent originally dating back to 1998 -- and that Apple got from Xerox -- has delivered into CEO Tim Cook's hands some serious, and scary, potential control over location-based services. If you thought that Google, Samsung, HTC, and others were already depressed over the legal success Apple has had in fighting Android, it's now officially worse.
Even more, it could bring some important activities of other companies, such as Facebook and Foursquare, under Apple's purview -- which is another way of saying that Apple might be able to tell these companies to pay up if they wanted to use location services. Given that location-based service is one key to the mobile ambitions of virtually everyone else in the industry, the patent could give Apple control over some hot parts of mobile technology, including location-based innovation in advertising, social networks, mapping, flash deals, and augmented reality. And Apple has proven that it's perfectly willing to use legal muscle to deal with competitors.
