[ascar]

As I get it from reading around Wikipedia they actually had something very similar to Google Earth before Google Earth/Maps happened. So I don't think it's fair to bring this in connection with patent trolls.

However, Google didn't seem to copy any of their tech but just implemented the same idea (a searchable/zoomable globe/map), which doesn't strike me as surprising as the idea isn't too farfetched and the tech is very much related to 3D graphics and game development, which had already come pretty far by 2004.

So the trailer implying they actually had it first and Google couldn't have done it without them seems pretty peculiar to me.

[jmgao]

Looking at the federal court decision [1], it looks like the patent was predated by an implementation that was demonstrated at SIGGRAPH, and apparently the creator of that gave the source code to the plaintiffs?!

"Lau further testified that, at the SIGGRAPH '95 conference, he performed live demonstrations of SRI TerraVision to at least 500 people, and in fact “gave [ ] the source code to TerraVision” to Art+Com employees who were in attendance and “walk[ed] them through the source code.”"

1: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-federal-circuit/1878050.html

[thevagrant]

Didn't Art+Com demo their version in 1994?

The court case was based on the patent date? which would be later?

[emerongi]

Kyoto (first demo) was at the end of 1994.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

AFAICT it was only a tech demo. They describe it as a "research project" commissioned by Deutsch Telecom on their website. I don't see any indication that this company were actively marketing or otherwise deriving economic value from it when they did the lawsuit, or even when Google Earth was first announced.