Makor: Real time vehicle guidance and forecasting system under traffic jam conditions Claim (1)

Last week, I examined a patent litigation case involving Makor Issues & Rights Ltd. and Google’s Waze. This week, I am going to delve more into the first claim of Makor’s ‘783 patent, involving real time traffic information and directions for mobile devices.

Claim (1). Multi-layer vehicular navigation system, where preferred starting point and destination point of the navigation route are significantly geographically different from each other, the system comprising:

(1.1) a wireless communications system for communicating with client vehicles, and a computer system operatively connected to the communications system, the computer system performing a hierarchically computed route search based on current and statistical section data by choosing roads with fastest classifications first, the computer system further combining data from intermediate layers subsequently and slowest rated roads last and then applying predicted road section coefficients corresponding to each route section;

(1.2) receiving device for collecting GPS data at predetermined time intervals from sample vehicles moving within a predefined geographical region;

(1.3) map database containing digital road maps of a predefined geographical region together with predetermined relevant data on road factors;

(1.4) said computer system operatively connected to the communications system capable of processing in real time said GPS data and transforming them into appropriately structured data suitable for being stored on the computer;

(1.5) a database suitable for storing and updating statistical data on traffic loads on individual roads;

(1.6) statistical application for collecting structured GPS data, computing individual statistical travel time estimates (regular times) for predetermined roads, and storing the results;

(1.7) statistical means application for periodical updating of the said statistical data using statistical criteria for determining volumes of data necessary for obtaining valid and reliable estimates; and

(1.8) computational tools for automatic identification of real time traffic jam conditions at various locations of the individual roads by utilizing the sample vehicles for measuring time delays.

Essentially, this independent claim states that this patent is covering a mobile application that works in a ‘hierarchal’ fashion, meaning that it will compute the fastest route from the current location to another desired destination by comparing all possible routes to one another. Parts (1.2) to (1.5) further define this by incorporating an online, community-based network of different drivers through GPS data and geographical region. 

The first claim of Makor’s patent closes by defining this patent as a database that can store real time traffic data and ultimately provide a computational tool for those who intend on traveling in the most efficient way possible. This relies on statistics and other criteria that determine such volumes of data. Delving into this patent has shown me that it actually does closely resemble Waze’s key aspects, which could be a big problem for Google in the long run.