The May 2 CORS newsletter mentions an article in Inside GNSS describing a claim to patent rights on the L1C GPS signal structure by a company owned by the British military. They're seeking royalties from receiver manufacturers in exchange for a license to use of the signal.
The US government -- and future buyers of GNSS receivers -- aren't happy.
Well, we already told them to screw off when they tried to make Galileo a pay service and "copyright" their signal. I suppose this "patent" claim won't hold up either.
>Psiaki's group consulted with Cornell's university counsel to allay concerns that cracking the code might be considered a copyright infringement.
>"We were told that cracking the encryption of creative content, like music or a movie, is illegal, but the encryption used by a navigation signal is fair game," said Psiaki, who compared the work of his team on Galileo to working out the frequency of light flashes and co-ordinates of a lighthouse. "The Europeans cannot copyright basic data about the physical world, even if the data is coming from a satellite that they built," he added.
>Under pressure, Galileo published PRN codes in mid-April but these labeled some open source codes as intellectual property, incorrectly claiming a license was required for any commercial receiver. Furthermore, the codes published were not those currently used by the GIOVE-A satellite.
Good idea Gavin. We could also let them have a royalty on what the DOD charges us for GPS use...
Patent claims have gone into bizzaro world. Apple has sued HTC for something as simple as selecting an email address in an email or text message you receive, and having that email address added to your contacts list.
Where will it end...? :'(