Facebook was recently granted a patent in the US for location based services, which allow location identification of social network members and publication of information based on the identified members’ location. The claims of the original Facebook application, filed in 2007, had gone through several changes during the examination process, so as to distinguish Facebook invention from many other inventions and patents which were known prior to the Facebook publication and filing.
The new Facebook patent discloses location based services that include identification of members’ location through their mobile devices and publication of their location and status in the social network. The patent also discuses proximity based services. This patent may threat other social networks such as Foursquare, which provide similar location based services.
The general concept of providing location based services for social network members is not new and was already published in patent applications such as those of Dennis Crowley (founder and CEO of Foursquare) filed in 2005 and Malcolm Beyer, which was quoted in the examination of the Facebook application. I myself made a search and quickly found many relevant applications such as a patent application by Charles Huston, filed in 2005. All of these applications describe location based services of members of a network and publication of members’ information based on the identified locations. Crowley even covers the proximity based services.
So how did Facebook patent lawyers manage to overcome this overloaded field and still be granted a patent?
This can be studied from one of the main claims of the patent:
1. A method of sharing locations of users participating in a social networking service at a geographic location, the method executed by a computer system and comprising: receiving location information and status information from a mobile device of a first user of the social networking service, the location information representing a geographic location of the first user, the status information manually provided by the first user on an input module of the mobile device; associating the location information with the status information of the first user in a database; and sending the status information and the location information of the first user to a second user for display. (The underlined sentences are changes that Facebook patent lawyers inserted during the examination)
In a nutshell, Facebook has narrowed down its claims and received protection for a process and a system which requires identification of a change in the user’s status, which was manually provided by the user using his mobile device. Once the system identifies the status s is updated, the identified location of the user is associated with the new status and the user’s update information is transmitted to other members of the social network.
The Facebook patent is therefore distinguished from other inventions in the field by focusing on a specific way of implementing the status update by receiving status updates that are manually inserted by the members through their mobile devices and associating their updated location from the mobile device .
This Facebook case exemplifies how patents protect the manner in which ideas are implemented and not ideas in themselves.
To receive a patent, two main conditions must be fulfilled: a first condition is that the invention is novel and the second condition is that a meaningful inventive step was established. This means that even if the invention is new over other inventions, systems, methods etc., this novelty must be non-obvious to a person skilled in the art for the patent to be allowed. This second condition is tricky and is subjectively decided by the examiner during the examination process.
The Facebook examiner was convinced that the Facebook claims are both novel and non-obvious under the prior art – others may think differently and claims that Facebook implementation was obvious..
In the US anyone can oppose a granted patent by presenting arguments and/or proofs that undermine any of these conditions. Let us wait and see if any of Facebook competitors will try and challenge this patent