Re: [emergency] Azos AI, LLC Patent

["Carl Reed OGC Account" <creed@opengeospatial.org>]

Title: Azos AI, LLC Patent

Patti -

 

I spend time in the OGC process dealing with potential patent issues in the geospatial domain. A big pain in the you know what, especially given that in the GIS world most patents are what would not be deemed as "original" - just way too much prior art.

 

In the case of this patent, appears that it is being held by what we call a patent "warehouse" a shell company that holds many patents and always fishing for sources of revenue. These companies are the worst of the worst in terms of their impacts on technology innovation and use..

 

Anyway, appears that Azos does not understand what CAP is all about. From the patent, "When that particular caller places a call to the user, the user's communication controller determines the caller's identification information and recalls the priority and corresponding blocking time interval for that particular caller. The call is accordingly passed to the communication device or blocked." Hmmm. But there is one nasty little sentence in the Claims section, "means for receiving and decoding an emergency condition from an incoming communication source".

 

Ahh, but farther down we find:

 

The caller database is then searched to find a record having caller identification information matching the caller identification information of the incoming communication and the respective priority for that record is retrieved to produce a retrieved priority. The blocking time database is searched to determine blocking time information associated with the retrieved priority to produce retrieved blocking time information. The call received time of the incoming communication is compared with the retrieved blocking time information. The method further includes the step of blocking the incoming communication if the call received time occurs during a blockout time indicated by the retrieved blocking time information and otherwise permitting the incoming communication to be routed to the user of the communications device. The method further includes the step to check if the call being blocked is an emergency call that will be routed according to the consumer pre-selected options.

What this patent appears to be about is caller-id and incoming call blocking. And of course there needs to be rules to insure that emergency calls can be made (911) and received (reverse 911).

 

Now, I am no lawyer, but it sure seems to me that CAP has nothing to do with a caller database, caller-id, caller blocking, and so forth.

 

I am not sure of the OASIS process for handling this type of IPR issue. In the OGC, we make a call for prior art, build a prior art portfolio, and then move on.

 

Not sure of this helps!

 

 

Carl

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Aymond, Patti

To: emergency@lists.oasis-open.org

Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 2:36 PM

Subject: [emergency] Azos AI, LLC Patent

While reviewing the EDXL-RM document, I found a surprising (to me, anyway) comment on the EM-TC IPR page (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/emergency/ipr.php):

“Azos AI, LLC. (Azos) holds United States Patent Number 6,359,970 which we believe to be essential to the compliant implementation of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Common Alerting Protocol Committee Specification Version 1.1 (the "Specification"). Azos is willing to offer nonexclusive licenses under this issued patent, upon written request from implementers wishing to pursue compliant implementation of the Specification. These licenses will be provided under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions, in accordance with Azos' then current licensing practices.”

Someone seeing this may conclude that a license for Azos AI technology is required for CAP compliance. Do we have any recourse in removing the comment or at least refuting it on the EM-TC IPR page?

Patti

Patti Iles Aymond, PhD
Senior Scientist, Research & Development

Innovative Emergency Management, Inc.

Managing Risk in a Complex World

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