From AvWeb:

December 8, 2010
Flight Planning Patent Being Enforced

By Russ Niles, Editor-in-Chief

FlightPrep, an Oregon company that received a patent for online flight planning, has apparently started charging royalty fees to other services doing the same thing and the result may be that some of the most popular services will shut down rather than pay the fees or try to fight them. At least one online chart and planning service, SkyVectors, has decided to eat the unspecified costs and continue business as usual, with a note on its charts referencing a licensing agreement with FlightPrep. Other providers are reportedly in the process of being contacted by FlightPrep. The patent appears to cover the basic functions of every online flight planner we've come across and FlightPrep's apparent willingness to enforce it raises inevitable questions about their future availability and cost. After-hours calls and e-mails to FlightPrep were not immediately returned but we hope to talk to them today.

When the patent was announced last January, FlightPrep declined to directly discuss whether it planned to enforce the patent and how. It began the patent process in 2001 and received the paperwork Dec. 29, 2009. Company President John Bouyea told AVweb at the time that it was mulling its options. "FlightPrep has not evaluated those issues at this time," Bouyea told AVweb. "The patent may be interesting reading for other providers and the aviation industry as a whole." FlightPrep has an online flight planner and charges a yearly subscription fee of $149.95.

End quote

And the fallout: Dec 10.

http://www.aero-news.net/

Be wary of news from Avweb.
Someone here entered Avwebs report of AOPA executives supposed 14% payraise which caused a major problem at AOPA.
The rebuttal from AOPA claims the increase was 2 and 3% not 14 and 15. Avweb have apparently not apologized.
Maybe Wiki has the truth.

I use skyvectors.com regularly but only to check current weather, not for flight planning. Pretty good site for that.

I totally dig Skyvector.com. Seems easy to use. I just use it for general idea planning and looking around. 99.5% of all my flying is for fun, so no planning for me.

I use FlightPrep. I subscribe to 90% of what they sell. I have been to there world headquarters at KUAO Aurora, Oregon. I will tell you, if the building there are in is an indication of how rich they are, they need to protect there patent.

I give FP an A++ on customer service. B + on the software and it continues to get better. I prefer my tablet running FlightPrep to my Garmin 430W.

If FlightPrep has a patent they need to charge people to use it.

FlightPrep has a FREE!! verision to try. Golden Eagle http://www.flightprep.com/rootpage.php? ... dl_pgmdata

Cheers...Rob

What Rob is showing off ^^ is not the center of the controversy. That's a tablet solution with touchscreen interface and moving map GPS, as well as satellite enabled realtime weather data.

Read this closely:
http://blog.runwayfinder.com/2010/12/09/runwayfinder-going-offline/

FlightPrep is on my shit list bigtime. Runwayfinder.com has been around for years.

The combination of technologies used to present freely available federal data in map form should not patentable. There is nothing to suggest FlightPrep did it first, only that they are the first to take this tack and start suing free websites who present a similar service. Please remember this when considering buying FlightPrep's products and services. They don't compete by offering quality, they compete by extorting and legally binding the hands of those who even remotely offer a similar service.

This is akin to someone else in 2011 writing forum software, and patenting a product and service for discussing backcountry flying over the Internet using PHP and MySQL, then suing BCP for infringement.

Consider FlightPrep's patent description: http://www.flightprep.com/rootpage.php?page=license

I am certain that patent would be overturned if someone took the time and money to challenge it.

I almost want Google or Jepp or someone powerful to get in this fight and squash them. Although Jepp is probably wondering if this tactic would work for them too.

I'm pissed about runwayfinder too, that was a great site!

Jeppesen has been getting away with this stuff for decades, wonder what makes flightprep so special. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

From the Runwayfinder blog:

Update 12/10/2010 2:30pm PST

A preliminary verbal agreement has been reached. Assuming we can work out the details over the next few days, RunwayFinder will remain online. I appreciate all of the messages of support. Sorry if I’m not able to respond to everybody personally. I’ll update this post as things progress.

RF came back online. Yesterday.

mountainmatt wrote:I'm pissed about runwayfinder too, that was a great site!

Jeppesen has been getting away with this stuff for decades, wonder what makes flightprep so special. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Yep. The wording of the patent description is so wide open, that they basically describe any web application that does those things. Airnav has a basic flight planning/distance calc app on their site that likely pulls from a database server "on the internet" and uses data from a "travel regulatory agency."

Who's next? Shortfield.com? Maybe Chris can patent that and then sue FlightPrep for providing enhanced descriptions and PiRepts of airports.

Zane wrote:I almost want Google or Jepp or someone powerful to get in this fight and squash them. Although Jepp is probably wondering if this tactic would work for them too.

Ya maybe Jepp can sue Gleim saying they have exclusive rights to produce flight training materials

GA is too small of an industry to be fighting over this sort of thing, especially when the whole patent issue is over a not exactly unique idea.

FlightPrep is a small family company. I don't think they did this on a whim. I'll bet they have a lawyer or two advising them they have a case. Time will tell.

Good day

FlightPreps side
http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/open ... light.html

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/FlightPrep

Unless there is some new information presented, I'll live among those that will never spend a dime with FlightPrep. I will not support any business that operates this way. The aviation community is too small for a company to survive this kind of BS unscathed. As a side note, the Runwayfinder site is run by a Vans RV builder, and if you want to piss off a group of your potential customers, it might be a good idea to choose a smaller, less organized group.

KB

especially when the whole patent issue is over a not exactly unique idea.

While the "idea" seems obvious to us today, it probably was a unique idea when the patent was filed in 2001.

RobBurson wrote:FlightPrep is a small family company. I don't think they did this on a whim. I'll bet they have a lawyer or two advising them they have a case. Time will tell.

Good day

Flightprep;

Fortunately, after a rigorous examination and considerable effort and expense, the USPTO issued a patent in 2009 for the process of generating travel plans on the Internet, what we all call online flight planning.

In addition to providing online flight planning, our goal in obtaining a patent for our Online Flight Planner was to promote the technology and make it available to others though mutually beneficial transactions.

Rob,

I just thought you should be aware that I am presently working on a patent to protect my intellectual property. This patent will apply to the process I have developed whereby firefighters post on internet pilot forums. I'm sure that we will be able to resolve this in a "mutually beneficial transaction". In the mean time, please stop posting.

My attorneys will be in touch.

mepps1 wrote:

RobBurson wrote:FlightPrep is a small family company. I don't think they did this on a whim. I'll bet they have a lawyer or two advising them they have a case. Time will tell.

Good day

Flightprep;

Fortunately, after a rigorous examination and considerable effort and expense, the USPTO issued a patent in 2009 for the process of generating travel plans on the Internet, what we all call online flight planning.

In addition to providing online flight planning, our goal in obtaining a patent for our Online Flight Planner was to promote the technology and make it available to others though mutually beneficial transactions.

Rob,

I just thought you should be aware that I am presently working on a patent to protect my intellectual property. This patent will apply to the process I have developed whereby firefighters post on internet pilot forums. I'm sure that we will be able to resolve this in a "mutually beneficial transaction". In the mean time, please stop posting.

My attorneys will be in touch.

I was worried for a minute, then I remembered, I'm retired, not a firefighter anymore. I was a fireMAN. None of that PC speak for me.

Cheers...Rob

+1 for never buying any of their products

Hope this doesnt effect fltplan!!

From the RunwayFinder blog:

Update 12/13/2010 11:25PM PST
I was hoping to be able to work out an agreement with FlightPrep where the lawsuit against RunwayFinder would be withdrawn and the website could stay online in return for some free advertising and removal of this entire blog post. FlightPrep has instead decided to keep the lawsuit active, so unfortunately RunwayFinder must be shut down. FlightPrep has posted some sort of temporary license on their website instead of contacting me directly, but unfortunately does not provide relief from their claimed damages. From FlightPrep’s attorney’s letter of December 9th: “While we appreciate your offer to shut down the website to stop future infringement, we notice that your website is still operation. And without further information from you, our only means to assess the potential damages is the observation that your website had 22,256 unique visitors in July 2010. Each visit represents a potential lost sale of our client’s patented invention at $149 per sale. This damage calculation exceeds $3.2 million per month in lost revenue.”

Shutting down RunwayFinder is not an admission of infringement or validity of the FlightPrep patent.

Thanks again for all of the messages of support.

Dave

That is sure bogus. Runway finder provided a great website and I don't know of another that provided the ability to go to sat view, and road map. The weather reporting along a route was great too.


Those features really helped with off airport landing sites.

Hopefully the parties can meet in the middle or something.