Patent Liability Analysis Introduction The project selected by group two is a parking garage monitoring system. The system will use ultrasonic object detectors to determine if cars are parked in all spaces of a parking garage. Each grouping of up to 32 sensors will send information to its respective Atmel microcontroller via Cat5 cable. The Atmel will send the information serially to a Linx LC series RF transmitter so that it can be broadcasted and received by a Linx LC series RF receiver located on each floor of the parking ramp. Each receiver will then transmit the information received from the broadcast of every Atmel on its respective floor to an Ethernet capable Rabbit microcontroller via Cat5 cable, which will output the information to a server via Ethernet. The server, which will be a windows machine, will contain a web page, and update this web page with the information sent to it from the Rabbit. By logging into the web page a user will be able to see available parking spaces in the garage, and statistics regarding the historic use of the garage. Due to the modularity this project, four packages will be required. The first package will contain only the ultrasonic sensor. It will be housed in a rectangular plastic casing with an Ethernet out connector. The second package will contain a 40 pin Atmel microprocessor, an RF transmitter chip, and a power supply for the Atmel, the RF transmitter, and the sensors. It will have 32 Ethernet input ports for connection to the sensors, power and ground connections, and an external antenna. The third package will contain only the RF receiver. It will have an external antenna and an Ethernet output. The fourth package will house the Rabbit microprocessor, with 8 Cat5 inputs to be connected to the receivers, power and ground connections, and an Ethernet output port, to be connected to the server. Many similar systems have been granted patents by the United States Patent Office. Possible areas of patent infringement as well as recommended action will follow. Results of Patent Search While searching for similar patents I found that the group 2 design infringed on existing patents in four primary areas. The first area that was troublesome was using a sensor to monitor the occupancy of a parking spot. Numerous patents have this claim and go about doing so in many different ways. The second area is a way to multiplex a large amount of sensors so that they share one line to the controller. The third troubling area is using a central control unit to monitor parking spaces. This is similar to the group 2 project with the server being the central control unit. The fourth area was displaying a graphical image of the floor plan of the garage and indicating which spots are vacant to be used. Some other areas such as the RF communication and Ethernet communication could be troublesome but are not the focus of the group 2 project and therefore the more primary areas were focused on. Following is a table with the main patents found performing substantially the same function as the group 2 project.
U.S. Patent Number Brief Description Similarity 6,694,259 System and method for delivering parking information to motorists occupancy status of space 6,662,077 Architecture for presenting and managing information in an automated parking and storage facility Displaying occupancy on a web page using floor plan image 6,559,776 and 6,344,806 Parking status control system and method 6,502,011 Method and apparatus for presenting and managing information in an automated parking structure 6,501,391 Internet communication of parking lot occupancy occupancy status of space, Displaying information on a web page using floor plan image, transferring information regarding occupancy to a server over Ethernet Displaying occupancy on a web page using floor plan image Allowing user to get a realtime representation of parking lot 5,900,806 6,317,034 Alarm sensor multiplexing Multiplexing a large array of sensors 6,292,110 Interactive parking facility occupancy status of space 6,266,609 Parking space detection occupancy status of space, transferring information regarding occupancy to central server 6,107,942 Parking guidance and management system 5,432,508 Technique for facilitating and monitoring vehicle parking Figure 1 : Results of Patent Search occupancy status of space, using the information so parking manager can identify space utilization occupancy status of space Analysis of Patent Liability
The first group of patents falls in the category of monitoring spaces to detect occupancy. Patent number 6,694,259 claims to use image processing techniques to identify whether or not stalls in a garage are occupied, performing computerized image processing on each image to automatically detect vacant parking stalls of said plurality of parking stalls. While the group two project uses ultrasonic sensors to detect occupancy, it could still infringe this patent under the doctrine of equivalents because essentially the same function is being performed. The following claim comes from patent numbers 6,559,776 and 6,344,806: a plurality of vehicle presence detectors, wherein each vehicle presence detector is configured to provide an indication of the presence of a vehicle in an associated one of said parking spaces. This appears to cause a literal infringement with the group two project because of the fact that group two will also use a plurality of vehicle presence detectors to detect occupancy. Patent number 6,292,110 claims to use vehicle sensors to detect the present of a vehicle. Later in the detailed description they propose the use of infrared sensors to detect heat of a moving object. Because the group two system uses ultrasonic sensors this would not be a literal infringement but could possibly be an infringement under the doctrine of equivalents because essentially the same function is being performed, even if by different means. Another patent that claims to identify whether or not spaces are occupied is patent number 6,266,609. This patent claims to identify whether or not spaces are occupied by using GPS coordinates of registered vehicles and comparing those to coordinates of known parking spaces. An infringement does not seem to apply here. This system is using GPS to determine the occupancy, whereas the group two system uses a sensor to determine occupancy. While essentially the same task is being performed, it is being done so in a substantially different way. One system uses a built in feature of the car that uses satellites and then compares that information with a database, while one system uses an external sensor to detect occupancy and needs to do no comparison. Patent number 6,107,942 also claims to uses sensors to determine occupancy. The difference in this system is that they use multiple sensors (weight, magnetic, cameras) to determine if a vehicle is there so that if one fails the other could catch the mistake. I don t believe the group two project violates this because their main claim is to use multiple sources to detect error. The final patent that makes a claim regarding identifying the occupancy of a parking spot is patent number 5,432,508. This patent also uses infrared sensors to do the sensing, so again an infringement according to the doctrine of equivalents could occur. Patents with topics in the area of sensor multiplexing are in the second topic of concern. The first patent, number 5,900,806 deals with multiplexing alarms. However, they lay claims to being able to hook many alarms up to one line (to be sent to a controller) and being able to differentiate amongst these lines. The group two system has many sensors hooked up to a mux/demux system so that only one control line is used for each direction of communication between the sensors and mux. A possible infringement due to the doctrine of equivalents could occur due to this. Whether or not this is done in substantially the same way is of question. The second patent in this area is patent number 6,317,034. Upon further investigation, it appears this patent is an update to the previously mentioned patent. The third category of patents is those claiming to send information to a central server to be stored. The patent found in this category is number 6,266,609. However, in this patent the central server is used to take in information regarding location of one vehicle in the area, to process it, and to return the information to other vehicles. The
group two server does not work in this way. It simply takes input from the sensors (not the vehicles) and displays it for a user to see from any web enabled device. Whether or not this is substantially the same is questionable because both systems are ultimately taking input and storing that information on a server. The users then view the information on this server to see if parking spaces are vacant. The fourth category is patents claiming to display parking occupancy graphically either on the web or in the garage. The group two project displays the occupancy graphically on the web to be viewed with any web enabled device. Patent number 6,662,077 claims to use a GUI to show vacancy of a parking garage. However, later in the patent it refers to displaying occupancy of a storage facility so that a user can determine vacant cells. This could still cause infringement due to the doctrine of equivalents because they are still using a GUI to display occupancy of a space. Patent number 6,502,011 has many of the same claims as the previously mentioned patent. Here a literal infringement actually might occur because the group two project displays occupancy using a GUI almost exactly as explained in the detailed description. The last patents of concern deal with various other aspects of the group two design. One idea conveyed in patent number 6,107,942 is the use of the information to the management to be used for statistical monitoring. This is an idea portrayed by the group two project but I don t see this causing an infringement because they are not clear about how they plan to go about doing this, and providing statistics is a very general claim that could be considered common. Patent number 6,501,391 claims it will allow the user to get real-time information regarding the occupancy of spaces in the garage, which is something group two hopes to accomplish. This seems like a very vague claim also but could be a literal infringement due to the wording in the patent The real-time representation may be in the form of a textual listing, a graphical map, a video image, an Internet Web page or similar form which is exactly what the group two project plans to do. The last infringement studied was the possibility of infringing patents claiming to transmit the parking data to a central server over an Ethernet. Group two plans on using Ethernet communication between the Rabbit microprocessor and the server, so a literal infringement could occur here. Action Recommended to Avoid Infringement Due to the numerous amounts of patents that contain similar ideas as those in the group two project, it would be very difficult to change all of the elements in order to avoid paying royalties or licensing fees. With regards to the use of the sensor and sensor array, it would be very difficult to change this as almost every possible way of detecting cars that comes to mind has been patented. The best action to be taken here is probably to get licensed. With regards to the server in the group two project, paying royalty fees on this patent would not be necessary. The idea conveyed in the patent number 6,266,609 is what could be considered substantially different so it should not cause an infringement. However, this conclusion may be best suited for a patent attorney to come to. A main focus of the group two project is displaying the vacancy of parking spaces to the end user using a GUI. Because of this, it would be very difficult to avoid paying royalties or licensing fees to the owners of patents 6,662,077 and 6,502,011. As stated in the previous section, displaying statistics for the operators of the plant should not be a
problem. Using Ethernet to transmit data to the server could be avoided and therefore infringement could be avoided on the last patent. Any method of data transfer could be used and a proprietary method could be invented such to avoid infringement if it was found cheaper than paying the licensing or royalties. Because of the large amount of patents in this area and because whether or not the group two project infringes is borderline, it would be advised to higher a patent attorney to investigate these matters more thoroughly to avoid costly lawsuits in the future. List of References 1. United States Patent and Trademark Office: http://www.uspto.gov 2. Patent Infringement Liability, D.G. Meyer, lecture slides http://shay.ecn.purdue.edu/~dsml/ece477/notes/pdf/4-mod8.pdf 3. United States Patent 6,694,259 System and method for delivering parking information to motorists Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://www.sun.com http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6694259 4. United States Patent 6,662,077 Architecture for presenting and managing information in an automated parking and storage facility http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6662077 5. United States Patent 6,559,776 and 6,344,806 (previous version of 6,559,776) Parking status control system and method http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6559776 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6344806 6. United States Patent 6,502,011 Method and apparatus for presenting and managing information in an automated parking structure http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6502011 7. United States Patent 6,501,391 Internet communication of parking lot occupancy http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6501391 8. United States Patent 6,317,034 and 5,900,806 Alarm sensor multiplexing Directed Electronics, Inc. http://www.directed.com http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6317034
9. United States Patent 6,292,110 Interactive parking facility http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6292110 10. United States Patent 6,266,609 Parking Space Detection http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6266609 11. United States Patent 6,107,942 Parking guidance and management system Premier Management Partners, Inc. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=6107942 12. United States Patent 5,432,508 Technique for facilitating and monitoring vehicle parking http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-parser?patentnumber=5432508