Lets save Runwayfinder.com

Re: Runway Finder offline, Flightprep to blame

mrmeschi said:
See:

http://blog.runwayfinder.com/

Its too bad that we pilots have to lose a great flight planning tool because Flightprep got greedy. Flying is already expensive enough! We should be promoting free products not trying to sue them out of existence...
Click to expand...

Well THAT SUCKS! I say the members of JC band together and help this guy out. He provides an invaluable service to us, and we need to spread the word. Go post this on all of the other websites that you are a member of and let it be known that flightprep is greedy and trying to squash the little guy. Read his blogs and see how they are treating this guy, and the slight of hand they have used to get him to shut down his web site. Write emails to flightprep, letting them know of your distaste for their practices and that you won't be using their program, so they will be getting no money from you, so they haven't gained the $3.2 million a month they talk about. There are to many other free services out there that can make up for this and although it may take another 5 minutes of your time, USE THEM. They want (flightprep) $149.95 a year for their service that is basically free. Skyvector is next.


We need to help this guy stop this in it's tracks.




On a closing note, how many of you would be willing to donate to this guys cause? I'm not talking about just checking the box, butactually donating say $10.00 to this fella to help him fight the lawsuit. See the poll, and PLEASE don't check the yes box unless you're serious.


http://forums.jetcareers.com/general-topics/118398-lets-save-runwayfinder-com.html
 
Doug Taylor said:
No, who are they?
Click to expand...


Cessnaflyer said:
What did it do that fltplan.com and skyvector couldn't do?
Click to expand...

Nearly the same stuff. But it was much eaiser to navigate. You could graphically see where TFR's were along your route, and then switch to a satalite view to help you navigate around stuff. It was way better than skyvector. Basically it was aviationweather.gov on steroids. And with the way the lawsuit against this guy is written, it won't be long before he goes after those two websites too. It's not just helping this guy out, it's saving the tools that everyoe uses (fltplan.com and skyvector.com included) from being sued as well.
 
As the majority of the posters on this forum fly jets, use company charts and have forgotten their roots I highly doubt your going to get a positive response. I never used the site, but the suit is a bad thing for us and GA. I'll forgo a couple beers tonight in support of a good GA website though.

If the owner of runwayfinder want to set up a paypal account we can send cash there, however, from his blog I bet he's just walked away from it all.
 
No, I won't pay. They infringed on copyright, and as such should deal with the consequences. As much as I don't like that people can copyright software methods, until that is illegal, I can't support circumventing copyrights.

Honestly, the owner of the website will be lucky if he can just walk away and not get stuck paying for all the potential lost revenue he caused.
 
Yeah the lawsuit is stupid unless he pulls the info from their own personally compiled source otherwise if it is derived from government he should have nothing to worry about because it is to be freely distributed.
 
Doug Taylor said:
No, who are they?
Click to expand...

Keep'in it classy.

Nice.

KSCessnaDriver said:
No, I won't pay. They infringed on copyright, and as such should deal with the consequences. As much as I don't like that people can copyright software methods, until that is illegal, I can't support circumventing copyrights.

Honestly, the owner of the website will be lucky if he can just walk away and not get stuck paying for all the potential lost revenue he caused.
Click to expand...

Unless RF can afford legal representation we'll never know for sure. From everything I've read it isn't so cut and dry.
 
Runwayfinder is by far the best of the sites I think. I also thought it was cool how you could overlay google maps with the charts.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
No, I won't pay. They infringed on copyright, and as such should deal with the consequences. As much as I don't like that people can copyright software methods, until that is illegal, I can't support circumventing copyrights.

Honestly, the owner of the website will be lucky if he can just walk away and not get stuck paying for all the potential lost revenue he caused.
Click to expand...


Uh, to me it looks like they "infringed" on a patent that was filed after the fact...
 
Codyjp said:
Keep'in it classy.

Nice.
Click to expand...

Completely classy! :)

Serious, if I go a month without some dorkbreath threatening to sue me, I start checking my SpamAssassin filters to see if it's being a little overzealous.

Did the webmaster actually receive legal documents or did some breathless webmaster write the typical "Ah'mo SOO!" email that I get all the time?
 
Doug Taylor said:
Completely classy! :)

Serious, if I go a month without some dorkbreath threatening to sue me, I start checking my SpamAssassin filters to see if it's being a little overzealous.

Did the webmaster actually receive legal documents or did some breathless webmaster write the typical "Ah'mo SOO!" email that I get all the time?
Click to expand...

From the site:
Update 12/13/2010 11:25PM PST
I was hoping to be able to work out an agreement with FlightPrep where the lawsuit against RunwayFinder would be withdrawn and the website could stay online in return for some free advertising and removal of this entire blog post. FlightPrep has instead decided to keep the lawsuit active, so unfortunately RunwayFinder must be shut down. FlightPrep has posted some sort of temporary license on their website instead of contacting me directly, but unfortunately does not provide relief from their claimed damages. From FlightPrep’s attorney’s letter of December 9th: “While we appreciate your offer to shut down the website to stop future infringement, we notice that your website is still operation. And without further information from you, our only means to assess the potential damages is the observation that your website had 22,256 unique visitors in July 2010. Each visit represents a potential lost sale of our client’s patented invention at $149 per sale. This damage calculation exceeds $3.2 million per month in lost revenue.”

Shutting down RunwayFinder is not an admission of infringement or validity of the FlightPrep patent.

Thanks again for all of the messages of support.

Dave
 
Create a "front company", move hosting of the site offshore, business as usual, end of story.

There are a lot of ways around this stuff, just gotta be creative, just can't think like a pilot. Think like a sex panther.
 
Neither of their websites (RF or Flightprep) gave much detail......Why are they not going after skyvector? skyvector has been around longer as I remember.
I like runway finder for the overlay of Google maps....the route planning is harder to use. When right clicking you can't select what waypoint you want to put it, it just puts in the GPS coords, not the VOR or airport you want to use. On skyvector you can select which waypoint you want in your route.
 
Doug Taylor said:
Create a "front company", move hosting of the site offshore, business as usual, end of story.

There are a lot of ways around this stuff, just gotta be creative, just can't think like a pilot. Think like a sex panther.
Click to expand...

This might be of some use to the owner of RF? He is doing it not for profit so may not know how to work this. I bet he'd be willing to listen. Is that how this site is running Doug?
Flightnerd said:
Neither of their websites (RF or Flightprep) gave much detail......Why are they not going after skyvector? skyvector has been around longer as I remember.
I like runway finder for the overlay of Google maps....the route planning is harder to use. When right clicking you can't select what waypoint you want to put it, it just puts in the GPS coords, not the VOR or airport you want to use. On skyvector you can select which waypoint you want in your route.
Click to expand...

Skyvector paid the man. Look at the not in the bottom right of their pages now.
 
Codyjp said:
This might be of some use to the owner of RF? He is doing it not for profit so may not know how to work this. I bet he'd be willing to listen. Is that how this site is running Doug?
Click to expand...

I'm not telling! :)

It's the internet. Incorporate in the Cayman Islands, lease a server in Korea, where in the heck are they going to take you to, international court? :) I'm sure the World Court in Den Haag is going to be all over a case like this! :)

Just gotta get creative.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
No, I won't pay. They infringed on copyright, and as such should deal with the consequences. As much as I don't like that people can copyright software methods, until that is illegal, I can't support circumventing copyrights.

Honestly, the owner of the website will be lucky if he can just walk away and not get stuck paying for all the potential lost revenue he caused.
Click to expand...

Did you even bother to read the blog? They snuck it through the patent office. My brother is going through a nearly identical lawsuit right now. Another guy who runs a similar buisness is sueing him "just to keep him tied up in court" because he is providing the same product in the same area from the same seller of said product.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top