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I may be wrong, but can't you essentially patent anything you want so long as it's unambiguous and no similar patents exist? Since Gowalla and Foursquare have been around for so long prior to this I'd expect the patent to be invalidated if it were ever asserted against those companies, who seem to me to have an abundance of evedence for prior art.

IANAL.....

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Patents in the US are on a "first to invent" basis -- so if someone else has done it before, then you theoretically can't actually patent it. This is different than in Europe where it's a "first to file" system.

Now the problem is that lots of people patent things anyway that they shouldn't be able to because (1) patent examiners are underpaid (2) they're overworked (3) they spend less than 24 hours on each application and (4) they only check very limited databases for prior art, which do not include the internet. Crazy, I know.

The patent was filed in February of 2007. Long before Foursquare and Gowalla were launched.

I'd still think it still should get thrown out due to prior art, since others came before it (from this thread no less): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764925

but not before dodgeball.

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