[gabble]

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.

[icebraining]

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."

Jules Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863)

[themartorana]

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.

[gozur88]

I had to laugh about

>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.

[icebraining]

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.

[1] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6520007226