[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