From Whence the Loon Balloon?
June 20, 2016
I read “This Company Claims Google Stole the Balloon Wi-Fi Tech behind Project Loon.” I learned:
a company called Space Data Corporation is claiming it developed that technology more than a decade earlier — and Google’s moonshot was based in part on its proprietary trade secrets.
The information was news to me. Google has been poking around wireless for years. I did a presentation which included a profile of Google providing wireless connectivity with gizmos mounted on top of a pizza delivery auto. I wrote a for fee column for a dead tree outfit about Google’s stake in Meraki. I even read some of Google’s wireless patents. Exciting stuff.
The write up states:
In a complaint filed earlier this week in Northern California District Court, Space Data cites two patents that Loon allegedly infringes on — one dealing with providing connectivity through a network of balloons (filed in 1999) and another dealing with the termination and recovery of those balloons (filed in 2001). Both patents predate Loon and the company does not appear to have licensed either one. Google holds a number of its own patents on Loon’s technology, granted without reference to Space Data’s technology. Space Data currently offers two products — SkySat and SkySite — both of which aim to provide balloon-based connectivity in a similar way to Project Loon. The system does not appear to be in wide use, although the company does hold FCC licenses to provide broadband spectrum services in remote areas of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
I have a nagging thought that the Google before its IPO got some push back regarding Yahoo’s Overture/GoTo technology. Since that time, hasn’t Google’s innovation mavens been inventing original stuff?
Stephen E Arnold, June 20, 2016
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