[kune]

A Jury in Delaware decided already that Google Earth doesn't violate the 1995 Art+Com patent. So the thing is settled.

But the fact remains that Art+Com had a working system in 1994 and the Keyhole founders had learned about it working at Silicon Graphics.

As it looks like there were multiple teams in the US working on something like or comparable to Terravision. Heck, I wrote a program in 1984 showing the world as a ball with the contours of the continents at the ZX Spectrum. I bet hundred's if not thousands of people did that as well, it is not that hard and requires only a little trigonometry.

I have no further insights into the story, but folks here should at least respect that a small group of hackers and and artists build a working system a good decade before Google Earth was published. I have yet to see any demonstration or video that comes near to Art+Com's TerraVision in 1994. There are papers written at the same time, a DARPA project working for a single military installation and a lot of work done shortly after TerraVision had been publicly demonstrated, but so far I have yet to see a video from 1994 or before comparable to Art+Com's TerraVision.

[kohlerm]

It was settled by a jury of amateurs. The judge was replaced at last minute, by someone whose wife allegedly worked as a lobbyist for Google. Huh?

[mxfh]

If art+com would have been some project by some Delaware boy scouts, the result would have been less predictable than what an, arguably if-in-doubt-vote-patriotic, jury of peers will preduce. This setup will always be in favor of US national interest, not what the rest of the world would understand as objective justice.

[lolwowok]

It’s somewhat humbling that you think a randomly selected jury has enough insightful perspective to defend American interests during patent litigation. We are apparently a much more devious and Machiavellian people than even I realized, and I work in the valley among the lot. What an accomplishment, in your eyes, to develop a world-unique legal system where even the process of voir dire furthers our supremacist IP interests at the expense of objectivity in jurisprudence. We should be proud of such a creation, no?

Until you show us a transcript of the hearing in which the stakes were explained in these terms to the jury (which doesn’t exist, as it’d be sanctionable for the lawyer arguing it for several reasons), this is just gratuitous and uninformed criticism of a country that ostensibly isn’t yours — which you hedged by saying “arguably” behind one of the key points, because you know it’s mostly bullshit. I guarantee you the randomly selected jury barely knew where Germany was, much less the important lines to draw to preserve our sovereignty in intellectual property abroad. Ask any patent litigator how difficult it is to bring the jury to the facts, looooong before getting to the Sun Tzu realpolitik you’re cooking up here.

If you’re going to make the low key America-is-stupid argument (I heard you, don’t worry), you can’t immediately undermine your own argument alleging that said stupidity intentionally furthers a broader evil purpose. It’s just stupid.

We have so many problems with our legal system that I’m honestly amazed you were able to invent one I hadn’t heard before. I also think you’re imagining China here, not the United States, given how trade dress and patent litigation goes for foreign entities there (like BMW; hey, they’re from Germany too!). Also extremely undermining to the point of hilarity that you included that country’s specific take on intellectual property litigation in the “rest of the world” distinguishing point regarding objectivity.

[mxfh]

The point is the the US has a neat way of avoiding individual responsibility with that setup. Judges are way more impartial since they have personal accountability, that's how the rest of the world does it, where a trial by jury is simply, and provenly the wrong tool for complex special domain cases.

[1] p1514:

According to these results, the patentee is significantly more likely to win a jury trial if: (1) the infringer is foreign; (2) the infringer is a corporation; and (3) the patentee is the plaintiff. The multivariate regression model further supports the conclusion that American juries favor domestic over foreign parties in patent trials.

[1] p1510:

Patentee win rate by Party Alienage:

Patentee-Accused Infringer / Jury / Judge

Domestic-Domestic / 71% / 29% Foreign-Domestic / 38% / 31%

[1] https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...

[kebman]

Not sure about the algos used, but the game "X-COM: UFO Defense" (known as "UFO: Enemy Unknown" in Europe) was released in 1994, and it prominently featured a 3D rendition of earth that was used in the game.