Google has a Patent on a hiking pole that takes pictures

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The USPTO routinely awards utterly bogus patents - perpetual motion machines, add 2 + 2 "using a computer" or "using the Internet" or "using a mobile phone", the list is endless.

This is a good case study for how sometimes, the invention is really easy but nobody has much use for it. Before Google, the only people who'd want to hide a small camera inside a walking stick would rather not advertise that they're doing so.

What would have been interesting is the navigation system. A walking stick is a pretty harsh environment for an IMU, and making IMUs small and light is a challenge. But the patent doesn't address the details, just says the stick must contain a GPS and/or an IMU. Google goes on to claim a "method" of associating location information (from a GPS and/or an IMU) with an image. The "method" is part c) of claim 10, and it's a good example of a bogus "method" claim where what's claimed is a result, not a method. Claim 11 is worse. There's nothing novel about using photos to build a "simulation" of an environment (i.e. Google Street View, Google Earth.) But they're claiming a patent on the method of "use a camera-on-a-stick-with-a-floor-switch to do something we already know how to do with any camera."
 
This does not seem "novel" at all, seeing that hiking poles with camera thread studs already exist, so it should be obvious to put a camera on a hiking pole. There has to be more to it, like limiting its scope to a system that generates street-view for hiking trails.

On the other hand, are anyone's pockets deep enough to fight google in an infringement suit, or fight google's lawyers in the USPTO to have the item re-examined?
 
This is a patent on a stick ("elongated member") with camera ("imaging sensors") triggered by a switch at the "bottom end" of the stick, and GPS ("location sensor") and/or IMU built in. If challenged, the patent will live or die on the novelty of placing the shutter button on the bottom of the stick so that you take a picture every time you plant the stick.

There are 16 further claims concerning refinements of that basic idea, such as #3 "a vertical grip... at the top... to allow the user to hold [the stick]"

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...8,467,674.PN.&OS=PN/8,467,674&RS=PN/8,467,674
 
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