Fitness giant sues exercise app developers

bicycleretailer.com

10 pointsbuzz273 comments

Incredibly vague patents, used against two companies that have produced innovative fitness products. I hope this doesn't stick.

It doesn't have to "stick". The results have already been achieved. These app developers likely don't have the means to defend themselves.

This is another excellent example of patents being issued for implications of technologies, instead of actual inventions. The inventions were USB, wifi/bluetooth, and online databases. Collecting data and storing it was simply the use of those technologies for their intended purpose, and a stupid-obvious one in this case. Its like patenting "driving my car to grandma's". The car was the invention, not deciding to use it to go to grandma's.

I'm pretty sure Garmin and Polar are pretty capable of fending for themselves, and I hope that by extension the smaller devs will be able to defend themselves more easily. But I agree on your second point

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