How the hell is this even patentable - its derivative of transmitting telephone and data from a balloon, which was done at least as early as the mid-50's.
Edisons bulb was actually novel, it was novel because it was a high resistance bulb (others were low resistance, so they consumed huge amounts of power), and it had a long life, hundreds of hours instead of tens of hours.
This isn't just about a patent. This is about blatant theft of a technology they were introduced to under a written agreement of confidentiality. Which they then turned around, copied, and announced as their own supposedly incredibly original development project. All the research and investment Space Data put into to even proving the idea was viable, and Google takes all the credit.
Unless it's significantly more than these two patents, google created their system by themselves through lots of hard work and that's a very unfair summary.
They broke a written confidentiality agreement with Space Data. You don't need an agreement like that for things you have patented (and hence are public and protected).
If they actually copied tech, that's bad. But it matters how much they copied. And just because they decided not to license doesn't mean they copied anything. They might have made a 100% independent balloon system, and being in the news while not-first is not 'stealing credit'.
I'm certainly not one to be surprised that Google could violate an NDA or trade secrets, but it's not clear to me exactly what they are alleged to have copied. Is it to you?
I mean, the basic concept and viability of an ubiquitous network of balloons providing Internet access had already been presented publicly by Space Data (see [1]), so you didn't have to violate an NDA to know that. The idea that you can control direction by changing altitude is also old as rocks (Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon is based on it).
And it's not clear to me that they actual alleged that Google copied the actual mechanism and/or used their trial tests data.
An NDA deals typical with disclosing of information. E.g. you visit Google to pitch your product and tell them you plan that launch it next year, or you have 200 customers signed up. The NDA says Google can't tell that stuff to the press or your competitors and possibly can't share that information with other divisions within Google (depends on the wording obviously). It would not cover "they'll copy our idea themselves". This is a standard, central concern with anyone pitching to BigCo and something you talk over and strategize about endlessly before the pitch. Everyone basically assumes it is a risk, hence the old advice "don't pitch to Microsoft", or I guess now: Google.
If this is the basis for the case then it obviously has no merit.
what about ideas that take a long time to implement? what about non-large entities who patent an idea and take a long time to implement due to resource constraints? there should be some incentive to producing novel ideas... what novel means is the hard part to define.
What do you mean? Space Data was using them, they built a bunch of balloon networks for the military. It's not clear to me that their allegations are correct, but they can hardly be accused of being an NPE.
With anyone who thinks there is any grounds on this any kinda lawsuit.
I honestly disagree. They (google) try to employ smart people (as any company should do), they pull from creative areas- have you honestly never thought you invented something only to find out that someone else came up with the idea earlier?
I swear that I invented the Jet Ski when I was like 8 years old- like motorcycle but boat... I drew up designed on graph paper etc- mine had a glass shield though, but also used thermodynamic for propulsion (initial versions used a prop).
Jet skis or whatever were around years before I came up with that. I was just a kid. Still though- a stolen idea or just something that other people as smart as you might also independently come up with is a grey area. And the flaw in patent law in the US. To insist on generalizing such as shape of controller or magnets vs. the purpose of real innovation to make an arms race for getting money back on it... I all it all BS In the modern age. Just MIT open source it if you have the guts to.
I am speaking to the general you. Sorry for my long winded jet-ski example. I totally invented that before it was a thing (at least to child self).
I think the difference is you didn't have closed door meetings with the inventor of the jet ski and almost enter into a licensing deal to build jet skis.
This isn't a patent troll and this isn't Google independently inventing something.
This is Google meeting with the company, getting closed door access to their tech and then deciding to copy large parts of their product. We can argue whether that should be legal in all/many/this case(s) but it's nothing like your jet ski example.
- they met with Google in 2007, didn't form a partnership
- in 2011, 4 years later, Google started Loon
- in 2016, 5 years later, Google gets sued
Makes me think that Space Data Corporation needs cash because they've been unable to make this take off in the 8 years in the interim.
The idea of using balloons to transmit data is not reasonably patentable. Maybe there are patentable implementation details (I'm skeptical), but is it really likely that Google poached them for Loon?
Or is it more likely that Google said "oh balloons transmitting data, cool", talked with a company looking into it, and it came to nothing. It's not like Loon has poached any of SDC's military contracts.
If SDC realistically was going to make this mass-market, it should have happened in less than 8 years; you can't just extract cash when someone successfully implements a generic idea where you failed (in a reasonable system).
> The idea of using balloons to transmit data is not reasonably patentable.
They're also suing for trade secrets and breach of contract in reference to the alleged meeting and NDA. If their meeting and NDA did cover this tech, I feel like they have a reasonable complaint. This isn't some company "from" east Texas that is just shooting bolts from the blue.
It's not like they just held the patent and let it get dusty, like you said they've been delivering working products to some markets.
> If SDC realistically was going to make this mass-market, it should have happened in less than 8 years; you can't just extract cash when someone successfully implements a generic idea where you failed (in a reasonable system).
So anytime anyone has an idea of any kind (i.e. no matter how stringent your standards for patentability), someone else with more resources and hands in a lot of huge markets can just say "cool" and then take it? I definitely think the US patent system's standard are terrible to begin with, and that the lack of real administrative effort to filter out unsuitable patents (or not give them for existing technologies) makes it abysmal in practice. But I don't think an environment where meeting with another company (with an NDA, no less!) means they might do business with you or they might just take what you told them and run with it will promote innovation either.
"Airborne constellation of communications platforms and method"
Satellites? GPS? Look, just because you say "here's an idea..." doesn't give you infinite protections to realize (or submarine, with exclusivity) that idea.
When an idea is a mild improvement (or slight step to the left) of another, that doesn't make it patentable or protectable, either. Google didn't invent content indexing or the search engine, and yet no one (reasonable) would argue they need to defer the idea of a search engine.
Besides, recovering balloons and transmitting data between airborne objects existed so long before this company, their claims are ridiculous.
Look up what "non-obvious" means, and let me know if you still think objects falling towards Earth at a different altitude constitute a patentable idea. Floating communications networks are not new.
There's nothing obvious about floating communication networks. It takes a pretty large amount of engineering to get right. There's a massive difference between satellite vs balloon based communication that I don't know why the comparison even needs to be made. To totally reduce the two to "falling towards Earth at a different altitude" (which isn't even accurate for balloons) totally ignores just about everything that makes them different. It's like saying the idea of a car can't be patented because it's just a hunk of metal on wheels and we already have bikes that fit that description.
"And now the gods of destiny smiled on Henry Ford. With the three-judge federal appeals court, he finally won vindication. The case opened on November 22, 1910, and the judges handed down their decision on January 9, 1911. They ruled that the Selden patent was valid, but only for cars made to its specifications. This was a total victory for Ford, because no working automobile had ever been built to Selden’s design. Thus the appeals court actually ruled that no royalties were required of anybody."
To wit: the patent on the gas engine was held to be enforceable only to that exact specification, and it changed the world more than floating balloons. Case law here is pretty clear, and broad patents like this would not hold up in the time of the rise of the car.
> Satellites? GPS? Look, just because you say "here's an idea..." doesn't give you infinite protections to realize (or submarine, with exclusivity) that idea.
You do realize the patent isn't just the title right? Did you really think that they didn't mention anything in a 73 claim patent that rules out satellites or GPS? Or did you not bother to even look at the thing before you decided, conclusively, it wasn't worth a damn?
And how is developing a business to sell these to the military submarining it? Not everyone has the resources and market reach of a Google or a Microsoft.
> When an idea is a mild improvement (or slight step to the left) of another, that doesn't make it patentable or protectable, either. Google didn't invent content indexing or the search engine, and yet no one (reasonable) would argue they need to defer the idea of a search engine.
If your standard of "mild improvement" includes replacing satellites with astronomical costs to launch and operate with weather balloons that are sometimes within the monetary reach of high school physics programs, then yes, I think that's a sufficient improvement to be worthy of some protection.
There are so many crappy patents out there, but from reading this one (from the standpoint of what I think is right, not necessarily what the law says on this issue) I don't think it's one. Like I said, I'd be more sympathetic to your viewpoint if you bothered to even skim it.
In any case, like I said (repeatedly) in the comment you are responding to, I think the more interesting factor here is the claims surrounding a meeting with an NDA. Especially since they allege that the meeting contained detailed information, like work on how to adapt to winds at various altitudes that they say took quite a bit of study.
> You do realize the patent isn't just the title right? Did you really think that they didn't mention anything in a 73 claim patent that rules out satellites or GPS? Or did you not bother to even look at the thing before you decided, conclusively, it wasn't worth a damn?
I'll admit I didn't read the entire patent claim, although I did spend a couple minutes with it.
> And how is developing a business to sell these to the military submarining it?
I didn't say they submarined anything. That was a genera comment about how patents hold even when the "inventor" (and not many patents these days are actual inventions) decides to not develop their invention. It's a license to lock an idea away.
> If your standard of "mild improvement" includes replacing satellites with astronomical costs to launch and operate with weather balloons that are sometimes within the monetary reach of high school physics programs, then yes, I think that's a sufficient improvement to be worthy of some protection.
They used weather balloons (already invented) and put a mesh network on them (already invented). To your own comment, it's not like anyone could come in and develop it from under them - it is costly, and that keeps competition at bay. But I still do not see where you think this deserves some exclusivity.
> Like I said, I'd be more sympathetic to your viewpoint if you bothered to even skim it.
Feeling any sympathy yet? :)
> I think the more interesting factor here is the claims surrounding a meeting with an NDA
NDA's almost always say things like this (from an NDA we've signed):
"Limitation on Obligations. The obligations of the Recipient specified in Section 4 shall not apply, and the Recipient shall have no further obligations, with respect to any Proprietary Information to the extent that such Proprietary Information:(a) is generally known to the public at the time of disclosure or becomes generally known without the Recipient or its Representatives violating this Agreement;(b) is in the Recipient’s possession at the time of disclosure;(c) becomes known to the Recipient through disclosure by sources other than the Disclosing Party without such sources violating any confidentiality obligations to the Disclosing Party; or(d) is independently developed by the Recipient without reference to or reliance upon the Disclosing Party's Proprietary Information."
So basically, if Google was already thinking about balloon grid networks, and wanted to see if they could collaborate with this company, then ballon grid networks are not covered under the NDA. Nor is anything else Google was considering prior to this meeting, that happened to be analogous. Likely if there is discovery, it will focus on this.
No, because if you skimmed it and then decided to say it was confusable with the prior art of communications satellites, you've just shifted from being lazy to plain disingenuous.
> NDA's almost always say things like this (from an NDA we've signed):
And you've read their NDA? I don't know how much more I have to couch things with allege and supposedly. I have no idea if they're blowing smoke up Google's ass or if they have a real claim. But you sure as hell don't have any evidence to write them off as confidently as you have been.
Someone wrote up on the wrong side of the judgemental bed today.
I'm sorry I didn't print out the patent, stash it away, go get a law degree, come back, study it, get a second opinion, and then comment, but hey, neither did anyone here, and yet HN survives.
I read enough to know I disagreed with it. I have been in business long enough to know you don't sign an NDA that doesn't cover internal prior art. I know you think you have a grasp on my ability to comment intelligently on patents and NDAs, but you are mistaken.
And be careful who you call disingenuous. It's an insult of a pretty high order, and were I a lesser person, I might have taken it personally.
I think the patent is too broad it could potentially prevent any company from putting any communication technology on balloons.
Plus how long should an NDA be preventing you from doing something you've been considering partnership with another company to do.
Any serious technology company would have iterated on their technology so much in 8 years that most of the information disclosed may not even be true any more.
It's also unclear weather any information gained by signing the NDA was actually used in the implementation of Project Loon.
> So anytime anyone has an idea of any kind (i.e. no matter how stringent your standards for patentability), someone else with more resources and hands in a lot of huge markets can just say "cool" and then take it?
If your idea is simple enough that they can easily replicate and improve it, then yeah. Of course.
What are you proposing? An alternative where society will not benefit from this idea because nobody who actually has the means to realize the idea can execute?
From the complaint:
"Space Data started offering
commercial wireless services in 2004 from a constellation of altitude controlled balloons which
drift in the stratosphere. Since that time, it has extended the technology to service the U.S. Armed
Services with deployments on four continents. "
"Examples of Space Data confidential information and trade secrets include, but are
not limited to, accumulation of weather data, launch methods, launch timing, balloon types, altitude
regulation, business methods, business models, financial information, technology solutions, and
unique knowledge and interpretation of weather data, wherein this knowledge and interpretation is
not available in public, which for example includes knowledge of the winds between 60,000 and
100,000 foot altitudes. "
The complaint is that google took some kind of confidential or trade secret knowledge about these winds. It can't be the directions and speeds, because those are constantly changing, and this was years ago. It's not methods of calculation, or they would have said so, like they said about the other points. So the only thing left under 'knowledge' is the mere fact that winds exist there. Of course winds exist there. They didn't discover that. Google's not even calculating most of the wind data, they apparently get that from NOAA.
Also from the complaint something that really stood out me:
"34. In a March 21, 2014 TED interview with journalist Charlie Rose regarding Project
Loon, Google co-founder Larry Page claimed that Google had been thinking of the idea of
launching balloons for “five years or more.” During the course of the interview, Mr. Rose asked
“But are you at the mercy of the wind?” to which Mr. Page responded: “Yeah, but it turns out, that
we did some weather simulations which probably hadn’t really been done before, and if you
control the altitude of the balloons, which you can do by pumping air into them or other ways, you
can actually control roughly where they go, and so we think we can build a worldwide mesh of
these balloons over the whole planet.”
35. As set forth above, however, Space Data had reduced this theory and simulations to
actual practice and had conducted over 15,000 flights and accrued over 100,000 flight hours of
such constellations in order to understand the wind patterns by the time Larry Page and other
individuals from Google had visited Space Data. This concept of “if you control the altitude you
can actually control roughly where they go” was something Space Data demonstrated in February
2008 to Larry Page personally with over a dozen balloons in the sky which were actively flying at
Space Data’s network control center."
The comment from Page seems a little disingenuous if the statement from Space Data is true, of course it's a complaint so everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt but if it's true that seems pretty damning.
if we cannot manage to guide our balloon, we must, at least, try to keep it in favorable aerial currents. In proportion as we ascend, the latter become much more uniform and flow more constantly in one direction. They are no longer disturbed by the mountains and valleys that traverse the surface of the globe, and these, you know, are the chief cause of the variations of the wind and the inequality of their force. Therefore, these zones having been once determined, the balloon will merely have to be placed in the currents best adapted to its destination."
Thank you for this. People's thinking on idea ownership and exclusivity is maddening. Thousands - millions, even - of ideas got us here, and they want exclusivity on the 1,000,001st.
>This concept of “if you control the altitude you can actually control roughly where they go” was something Space Data demonstrated in February 2008 to Larry Page personally with over a dozen balloons in the sky which were actively flying at Space Data’s network control center."
for just this reason. The "concept" is, and has been for 300 years, the realization that allowed balloonists to steer their craft.
I suspect they have a point, though, even if it's not well made. If they've done enough experimentation to prove they can maintain the position of their balloons at all times (or nearly so) well enough to create a reliable network, that probably qualifies as a trade secret. Knowing that something is possible gets you halfway to copying it.
Space Data themselves made a public presentation[1] of their network of balloon with transceivers (called SkySite) years before Google started their project, so the proof that it was possible was already public information.
It's not clear to me exactly what has Google allegedly infringed upon.
I'm under the impression that in suits like this you have to show some sort of a material loss to claim damages. That seems tough to do when Loon doesn't make any money though. Can anyone clarify? IANAL
> They can say they'd have Google's business if Google hadn't signed NDAs, learned their trade secrets, then decided to do it in-house.
This seems like the issue to me, they can say they'd have Google's Loon business. But that's 0 actual business. I don't see how they can possibly claim they'd have Google's advertising business since it's obviously completely unrelated to what they do.
The money Google invested in loon can be argued to be less than Google would have paid to buy in the tech. This puts a nice lower bound number on the lost opportunity.
So buses transmit data. So do cars, planes, satellites, the space station. One day someone talks about doing it from a balloon and years later, when someone manages to do it they stole something and must be punished?
If true, it's disappointing that a great organization like the G would do something like this fully aware. I'm inclined to believe, at the moment, if the allegations are true, the PM for this who met with the plaintiffs decided to go rogue rather then it being from further up the chain.
Your posts regarding anything related to Google are rotten to the core. Your agenda is to disparage Google and your post history is indicative of this.
I criticize pretty much any tech company involved in criminal levels of mischief. I probably talk about Google a little bit more than other companies, if only because so many people give Google a free pass on their behavior.
Here, I responded to someone suggesting Google's top people were hopefully innocent of this issue. I provided the direct evidence, quoted from the article, that it is not the case.
We can suggest that until a ruling is made, or a settlement agreed, that they may or may not have broken the law. But we can rule out the suggestion of a 'Rogue PM' quite easily. As SDC claiming Larry and Sergey were present, if they weren't, would quite quickly derail their case.
Since this case is more or less obvious I would really like to know how Googles/Alphabets decision making process works.
For example: A start-up with interesting new technology and a headquarter near capital city (Government nearby/useful for lobbing) -> buy it, or a small company in the country -> "borrow" it.
I don't think we can really make any informed remarks on these claims without more information.
We don't know:
* the NDA terms
* what the "trade secrets" Google is alleged to have taken/used are
* whether the patents are going to stand under scrutiny
* why they couldn't come to an agreement in the first place.
If I were in Google's position, I would probably have either paid them even a minorly extortionate value to come to a licensing agreement (to mitigate precisely this circumstance), or arranged a "clean room" to implement their Loon tech without anyone involved in the trade secrets having input (beyond the necessary "approve/disapprove" from some level of management above the team, since they allege the co-founders were covered by the NDA and knew trade secrets).
It's not impossible that Google is acting in poor faith here, but I don't think we can draw any conclusions until more information comes out.
63 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadI mean, the basic concept and viability of an ubiquitous network of balloons providing Internet access had already been presented publicly by Space Data (see [1]), so you didn't have to violate an NDA to know that. The idea that you can control direction by changing altitude is also old as rocks (Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon is based on it).
And it's not clear to me that they actual alleged that Google copied the actual mechanism and/or used their trial tests data.
[1] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6520007226
If this is the basis for the case then it obviously has no merit.
Claims 'Space Data Corporation', let's not portray their statements as facts until there is evidence to back it up with.
In reality it's even worse, since NPEs typically don't (indirectly) cause physical harm to people.
I honestly disagree. They (google) try to employ smart people (as any company should do), they pull from creative areas- have you honestly never thought you invented something only to find out that someone else came up with the idea earlier?
I swear that I invented the Jet Ski when I was like 8 years old- like motorcycle but boat... I drew up designed on graph paper etc- mine had a glass shield though, but also used thermodynamic for propulsion (initial versions used a prop).
Jet skis or whatever were around years before I came up with that. I was just a kid. Still though- a stolen idea or just something that other people as smart as you might also independently come up with is a grey area. And the flaw in patent law in the US. To insist on generalizing such as shape of controller or magnets vs. the purpose of real innovation to make an arms race for getting money back on it... I all it all BS In the modern age. Just MIT open source it if you have the guts to.
I am speaking to the general you. Sorry for my long winded jet-ski example. I totally invented that before it was a thing (at least to child self).
- they met with Google in 2007, didn't form a partnership
- in 2011, 4 years later, Google started Loon
- in 2016, 5 years later, Google gets sued
Makes me think that Space Data Corporation needs cash because they've been unable to make this take off in the 8 years in the interim.
The idea of using balloons to transmit data is not reasonably patentable. Maybe there are patentable implementation details (I'm skeptical), but is it really likely that Google poached them for Loon?
Or is it more likely that Google said "oh balloons transmitting data, cool", talked with a company looking into it, and it came to nothing. It's not like Loon has poached any of SDC's military contracts.
If SDC realistically was going to make this mass-market, it should have happened in less than 8 years; you can't just extract cash when someone successfully implements a generic idea where you failed (in a reasonable system).
They're also suing for trade secrets and breach of contract in reference to the alleged meeting and NDA. If their meeting and NDA did cover this tech, I feel like they have a reasonable complaint. This isn't some company "from" east Texas that is just shooting bolts from the blue.
It's not like they just held the patent and let it get dusty, like you said they've been delivering working products to some markets.
> If SDC realistically was going to make this mass-market, it should have happened in less than 8 years; you can't just extract cash when someone successfully implements a generic idea where you failed (in a reasonable system).
So anytime anyone has an idea of any kind (i.e. no matter how stringent your standards for patentability), someone else with more resources and hands in a lot of huge markets can just say "cool" and then take it? I definitely think the US patent system's standard are terrible to begin with, and that the lack of real administrative effort to filter out unsuitable patents (or not give them for existing technologies) makes it abysmal in practice. But I don't think an environment where meeting with another company (with an NDA, no less!) means they might do business with you or they might just take what you told them and run with it will promote innovation either.
Satellites? GPS? Look, just because you say "here's an idea..." doesn't give you infinite protections to realize (or submarine, with exclusivity) that idea.
When an idea is a mild improvement (or slight step to the left) of another, that doesn't make it patentable or protectable, either. Google didn't invent content indexing or the search engine, and yet no one (reasonable) would argue they need to defer the idea of a search engine.
Besides, recovering balloons and transmitting data between airborne objects existed so long before this company, their claims are ridiculous.
You may also want to look up what falling means (hint: working satellites do it, working balloons do not).
https://fee.org/articles/how-henry-ford-zapped-a-licensing-m...
To wit: the patent on the gas engine was held to be enforceable only to that exact specification, and it changed the world more than floating balloons. Case law here is pretty clear, and broad patents like this would not hold up in the time of the rise of the car.
You do realize the patent isn't just the title right? Did you really think that they didn't mention anything in a 73 claim patent that rules out satellites or GPS? Or did you not bother to even look at the thing before you decided, conclusively, it wasn't worth a damn?
And how is developing a business to sell these to the military submarining it? Not everyone has the resources and market reach of a Google or a Microsoft.
> When an idea is a mild improvement (or slight step to the left) of another, that doesn't make it patentable or protectable, either. Google didn't invent content indexing or the search engine, and yet no one (reasonable) would argue they need to defer the idea of a search engine.
If your standard of "mild improvement" includes replacing satellites with astronomical costs to launch and operate with weather balloons that are sometimes within the monetary reach of high school physics programs, then yes, I think that's a sufficient improvement to be worthy of some protection.
There are so many crappy patents out there, but from reading this one (from the standpoint of what I think is right, not necessarily what the law says on this issue) I don't think it's one. Like I said, I'd be more sympathetic to your viewpoint if you bothered to even skim it.
In any case, like I said (repeatedly) in the comment you are responding to, I think the more interesting factor here is the claims surrounding a meeting with an NDA. Especially since they allege that the meeting contained detailed information, like work on how to adapt to winds at various altitudes that they say took quite a bit of study.
I'll admit I didn't read the entire patent claim, although I did spend a couple minutes with it.
> And how is developing a business to sell these to the military submarining it?
I didn't say they submarined anything. That was a genera comment about how patents hold even when the "inventor" (and not many patents these days are actual inventions) decides to not develop their invention. It's a license to lock an idea away.
> If your standard of "mild improvement" includes replacing satellites with astronomical costs to launch and operate with weather balloons that are sometimes within the monetary reach of high school physics programs, then yes, I think that's a sufficient improvement to be worthy of some protection.
They used weather balloons (already invented) and put a mesh network on them (already invented). To your own comment, it's not like anyone could come in and develop it from under them - it is costly, and that keeps competition at bay. But I still do not see where you think this deserves some exclusivity.
> Like I said, I'd be more sympathetic to your viewpoint if you bothered to even skim it.
Feeling any sympathy yet? :)
> I think the more interesting factor here is the claims surrounding a meeting with an NDA
NDA's almost always say things like this (from an NDA we've signed):
"Limitation on Obligations. The obligations of the Recipient specified in Section 4 shall not apply, and the Recipient shall have no further obligations, with respect to any Proprietary Information to the extent that such Proprietary Information: (a) is generally known to the public at the time of disclosure or becomes generally known without the Recipient or its Representatives violating this Agreement; (b) is in the Recipient’s possession at the time of disclosure; (c) becomes known to the Recipient through disclosure by sources other than the Disclosing Party without such sources violating any confidentiality obligations to the Disclosing Party; or (d) is independently developed by the Recipient without reference to or reliance upon the Disclosing Party's Proprietary Information."
So basically, if Google was already thinking about balloon grid networks, and wanted to see if they could collaborate with this company, then ballon grid networks are not covered under the NDA. Nor is anything else Google was considering prior to this meeting, that happened to be analogous. Likely if there is discovery, it will focus on this.
No, because if you skimmed it and then decided to say it was confusable with the prior art of communications satellites, you've just shifted from being lazy to plain disingenuous.
> NDA's almost always say things like this (from an NDA we've signed):
And you've read their NDA? I don't know how much more I have to couch things with allege and supposedly. I have no idea if they're blowing smoke up Google's ass or if they have a real claim. But you sure as hell don't have any evidence to write them off as confidently as you have been.
I'm sorry I didn't print out the patent, stash it away, go get a law degree, come back, study it, get a second opinion, and then comment, but hey, neither did anyone here, and yet HN survives.
I read enough to know I disagreed with it. I have been in business long enough to know you don't sign an NDA that doesn't cover internal prior art. I know you think you have a grasp on my ability to comment intelligently on patents and NDAs, but you are mistaken.
And be careful who you call disingenuous. It's an insult of a pretty high order, and were I a lesser person, I might have taken it personally.
Plus how long should an NDA be preventing you from doing something you've been considering partnership with another company to do.
Any serious technology company would have iterated on their technology so much in 8 years that most of the information disclosed may not even be true any more.
It's also unclear weather any information gained by signing the NDA was actually used in the implementation of Project Loon.
If your idea is simple enough that they can easily replicate and improve it, then yeah. Of course.
What are you proposing? An alternative where society will not benefit from this idea because nobody who actually has the means to realize the idea can execute?
"Examples of Space Data confidential information and trade secrets include, but are not limited to, accumulation of weather data, launch methods, launch timing, balloon types, altitude regulation, business methods, business models, financial information, technology solutions, and unique knowledge and interpretation of weather data, wherein this knowledge and interpretation is not available in public, which for example includes knowledge of the winds between 60,000 and 100,000 foot altitudes. "
Haha, well I just started taking this complaint a lot less seriously.
"34. In a March 21, 2014 TED interview with journalist Charlie Rose regarding Project Loon, Google co-founder Larry Page claimed that Google had been thinking of the idea of launching balloons for “five years or more.” During the course of the interview, Mr. Rose asked “But are you at the mercy of the wind?” to which Mr. Page responded: “Yeah, but it turns out, that we did some weather simulations which probably hadn’t really been done before, and if you control the altitude of the balloons, which you can do by pumping air into them or other ways, you can actually control roughly where they go, and so we think we can build a worldwide mesh of these balloons over the whole planet.”
35. As set forth above, however, Space Data had reduced this theory and simulations to actual practice and had conducted over 15,000 flights and accrued over 100,000 flight hours of such constellations in order to understand the wind patterns by the time Larry Page and other individuals from Google had visited Space Data. This concept of “if you control the altitude you can actually control roughly where they go” was something Space Data demonstrated in February 2008 to Larry Page personally with over a dozen balloons in the sky which were actively flying at Space Data’s network control center."
The comment from Page seems a little disingenuous if the statement from Space Data is true, of course it's a complaint so everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt but if it's true that seems pretty damning.
Jules Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863)
>This concept of “if you control the altitude you can actually control roughly where they go” was something Space Data demonstrated in February 2008 to Larry Page personally with over a dozen balloons in the sky which were actively flying at Space Data’s network control center."
for just this reason. The "concept" is, and has been for 300 years, the realization that allowed balloonists to steer their craft.
I suspect they have a point, though, even if it's not well made. If they've done enough experimentation to prove they can maintain the position of their balloons at all times (or nearly so) well enough to create a reliable network, that probably qualifies as a trade secret. Knowing that something is possible gets you halfway to copying it.
It's not clear to me exactly what has Google allegedly infringed upon.
[1] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6520007226
They can say they'd have Google's business if Google hadn't signed NDAs, learned their trade secrets, then decided to do it in-house.
This seems like the issue to me, they can say they'd have Google's Loon business. But that's 0 actual business. I don't see how they can possibly claim they'd have Google's advertising business since it's obviously completely unrelated to what they do.
"Space Data further adds in the complaint that as many as 10 Google representatives, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin"
Google is rotten from the very top.
We can suggest that until a ruling is made, or a settlement agreed, that they may or may not have broken the law. But we can rule out the suggestion of a 'Rogue PM' quite easily. As SDC claiming Larry and Sergey were present, if they weren't, would quite quickly derail their case.
capitalism.
For example: A start-up with interesting new technology and a headquarter near capital city (Government nearby/useful for lobbing) -> buy it, or a small company in the country -> "borrow" it.
We don't know:
* the NDA terms
* what the "trade secrets" Google is alleged to have taken/used are
* whether the patents are going to stand under scrutiny
* why they couldn't come to an agreement in the first place.
If I were in Google's position, I would probably have either paid them even a minorly extortionate value to come to a licensing agreement (to mitigate precisely this circumstance), or arranged a "clean room" to implement their Loon tech without anyone involved in the trade secrets having input (beyond the necessary "approve/disapprove" from some level of management above the team, since they allege the co-founders were covered by the NDA and knew trade secrets).
It's not impossible that Google is acting in poor faith here, but I don't think we can draw any conclusions until more information comes out.