US patent on flight planning

[FREDAcheck]

Well, the bad news is that it can cost $50k to defend a frivolous patent assertion, much more if your opponent has deep pockets. As a result, small companies may simply pay up.

That said...

This particular patent looks to have weaknesses:

1. The patent was filed on 28 Sep 2005. I'd rather doubt it was wholly novel at that date. I suspect that there were other systems doing enough of what's described in the patent to undermine it enough to limit how broadly the claims can be interpreted. Anything in the public domain (not necessarily a previous patent) counts as "prior art".
2. The patent language talks repeatedly of "frames". It's not clear if that has to be interpreted as a web page frame, but it might be possible to argue so, and thus that non-frames web pages wouldn't infringe.
3. The claim language includes "...each selected composite travel navigation chart including a travel chart merged with travel navigation waypoints, the travel navigation waypoints including radio navigation aids...". If you have a system where the navigational charts do not include way points and radio nav aids, but these are drawn separately, then that system may well not infringe.
4. The claim language includes: "...downloading the Web page with the selected composite travel navigation chart from the server computer to the client computer as a two-dimensional array of map tiles that include up-to-date navigation data ...". If the array of map tiles did not include up-to-date navigation data, but that were downloaded separately as an overlay, that might not infringe.

Patent examiners make mistakes, but don't usually grant patents without some novelty. In other words, it's likely that the overall combination of things that the patent describes is novel. But it's quite likely that only the exact combination claimed is novel. Any system that doesn't include every step of the claim doesn't infringe. As this patent is relatively recent, it's likely that there were other systems around at the time of the patent doing closely related things. This will prevent any broad interpretation of the claims, and probably make it relatively easy to work around the patent.

However, small companies will probably just pay up.