Uber Comes in First in GPS Tracking Patent Suit
Written February 20, 2020
The US District Court for the Northern District of California on February 12, 2020, held that the function of Uber Technologies Inc.'s app that displays driver and rider locations on a map doesn’t infringe two of X One Inc.’s GPS tracking patents. X One Inc. v. Uber Techs. Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 16-CV-06050, 2/12/20.
X One Inc. sued Uber for infringing its patents related to a system for exchanging GPS data between cell phones or other wireless devices that allows for “mutual tracking.” The patents describe functions that “obtain a map,” “plot the driver locations on the same map,” and transmit the same map “with plotted locations.
The district court found Uber didn’t infringe the patents. Specifically, Uber’s app obtains and plots driver locations on the same map but transmits plotted locations on a different map. Therefore, Uber didn’t infringe because there was “no common map” in its app that satisfied all of the relevant patent limitations.