[OSGeo-Discuss] Patent for feature of paper map.

[Brian Russo]

I've seen legends similar to that before; afraid I can't offer anything
solid in terms of prior art examples but it's hardly as revolutionary as
they seem to think.
Pretty absurd if you ask me;
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 7:34 AM, "René A. Enguehard" <ahugenerd at gmail.com>wrote:

> I suspect they might be applying for the patent but in for quite a surprise
> when it gets rejected. Features for maps would be very tricky to patent and,
> more importantly, not in the interest of the general public. As such the
> patent applications would probably get rejected. Would we really want people
> patenting things like projections, north arrows, scale bars or legends? I
> don't think it would be productive and suspect any patent office in its
> right mind would see it the same way.
>
> Patents were created to help people protect their ideas for a length of
> time so they could reap the rewards of their work and refine it without fear
> of being copied or undercut. This works very well for many things but fails
> miserably for conceptual things like maps or layouts for books or posters.
> This is why many patent offices now require people to patent "systems"
> rather than "things". I don't see how a wrap-around map could be explained
> as a system.
>
> René
> IANAL
>
> Landon Blake wrote:
>
>>
>> The latest issue of the ACSM Bulletin had an interesting article about a
>> map matrix that wraps around the edge of a paper map. It seems the company
>> that is using this feature of hard copy map design is applying for a patent.
>> I didn’t even think you could get a patent a feature of a paper map. It got
>> me wondering who holds the patent on the use of a north arrow and scale.
>>
>> At any rate, here is the article if you are interested in reading it:
>>
>> http://www.webmazine.org/issues/current/documents/wrap.pdf
>>
>> I couldn’t find the patent application, or I would have posted a link to
>> it. Let me know if you have any comments.
>>
>> Landon
>>
>>
>>
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