Posts Tagged: "GPS"

Fortune tech writer Jeff John Roberts, who penned this particular article, regurgitates Cloudflare’s claims that Blackbird “may be engaging in illegal fee-splitting arrangements with patent owners” simply because it is run by people who have experience as patent litigators. It’s true that Blackbird is staffed with many lawyers coming from leading firms in patent law like Fish & Richardson and Kirkland & Ellis, but Blackbird is asserting the patents on their own behalf. Although the patent owner gets a share of the revenues from patent assertion, there is nothing unethical about the arrangement. Because Blackbird is not a law firm and does not receive fees, there are no fees to split. But don’t tell that to the editorial staff at Fortune. They apparently don’t want something like fact to get in the way of a fake, juicy patent troll narrative that makes patent owners look like villains.

Mathematics has long been accepted as a tool to model the physical reality. For many it is hard to grasp that math actually “does something.” The reality is that mathematics based instructions in computers generate signals that are useful and used. This type of mathematics may be called “operational mathematics.” Operational math already replaces devices that used to be made from valves and gears or from electronic components. Operational mathematics also enables new devices that were previously unimaginable.

Many of these issues would be addressed by a new ground-based GPS system being developed by an Australian tech firm in collaboration with both NASA and the U.S. Air Force. Locata, headquartered in the Australian Capital Territory city of Bruce, has designed ground-based transmitters which can provide accurate positioning by blanketing a vicinity with radio signals. NASA has seen some success in integrating the technology into unmanned aircraft safety systems while the Air Force is using the radio signal technology to monitor warfare simulation facilities in New Mexico. Signal synchronization timing is about 50 times quicker than conventional GPS and the proximity of these Earth-based sensors to receivers mean that signals can be more easily detected through walls.

Our research of General Motors’ recent patent activities using Innography’s research tools we created the text cluster diagram, which is shown left and relates to GM patent activity since January 2010. This diagram quickly allows us to identify improvements and innovations relating to the motor vehicle itself as accounting for nearly half of all GM patent acting, which the single largest focus being on innovations relating to the vehicle body. The Innography diagram also shows that GM is quite active in exploring innovations relating to control modules, electric motors and internal combustion engines.