Once patent applications are in the system, they sit — for years.
Before the flak jacket, Donzis developed running shoes with air chambers inflated by a built-in pump and acquired a patent on the system in 1972.
Text and images can both be enlarged or reduced according to what a device's camera, proximity sensor or SONAR sensor (which Apple described in a previous patent) tells the system about how far away a user's face is.
In a recent case between Apple and Motorola, Judge Richard A. Posner, a prominent federal appeals court judge in Chicago, said in court that the use of patents in the smartphone industry showed a system in "chaos".
"We have decided not to pursue patents in Europe because the system makes it effectively impossible for us to defend them," says Fernando Guerrero, the Spanish co-founder of Solid Quality Mentors, a multinational technical consulting firm.
He patented the system in 1930 but spent another decade getting the turbine off the ground.
The originality and effectiveness of the GPS-CAL system, as confirmed by workers in the sector, allowed the authors, the Università degli Studi di Milano and the Sisteck (Sassuolo, Italy) to patent the system in Italy and Europe.
He has filed 13 patents in the areas of search, social networking, systems, and content optimization.
The company seems oddly positioned by leaning heavily on Microsoft's technology, but CEO George Langan assures me that they can continue to develop the component without Microsoft's support and have a great deal of patented IP in the database system they run on.
In his patent, he says the system will help people manage their diets during a busy day.
