[Geowanking] Quova patent IP geolocation methods

[Anthony Townsend]

i actually did some consulting for Quova back in 1999 evaluating this 
very product internally for them.

this fuzzy logic method really is actually what they use (and they had 
it working well back them) and it does work, and its actually in my 
para-legal opinion something rather innovative, which i would hope that 
our IP laws could protect (though i don't know if a patent is 
appropriate - maybe a trade secret).

i can definitely say they've been working on this since at least 1999, 
and as far as i know (i interviewed everyone on the development team 
rather extensively) they built it themselves.


On Jan 29, 2004, at 8:07 PM, Paul Hastings wrote:

> yes this is unfortunate. have they contacted anyone regarding this?  
> will you contact them or "let sleeping dogs lie"? as a programmer the 
> only thing that seems "different" from nigel's work are these bits:
>
> "and to attach a confidence factor to each of the plurality of 
> geographic locations; and selecting an estimated geographic location 
> from the plurality of geographic locations as being a best estimate of 
> a true geographic location of the network address, where the selection 
> of the estimated geographic location is based upon a degree of 
> confidence-factor weighted agreement within the plurality of 
> geographic locations."
>
> you don't attach a "confidence factor" nor do you seem to select a 
> country by "degree of confidence-factor weighted agreement within the 
> plurality of geographic locations."
>
> probably all wishful thinking (as you know nigel we have 1000++ cf 
> developers using your java class).