Lets save Runwayfinder.com

I talked with the GM of flightprep.com and he said the minute Dave agrees to the temporary license, the lawsuit will go away. Apparently they have been trying to contact him, and he has just been uncooperative with the licensing. Skyvector has worked out a contract with flightprep. The GM sounds really concerned about this entire thing, and told me to pass this info along to Dave.
 
I really like runwayfinder, but I don't think I could dish out money for them. If they cease to exist, I will use other means for my charts/planning.
 
I've used runwayfinder for years and love it. I was shocked to read the recent news but these things always happen. Unless you monetize with a sellable product you always risk not having the capitol to ignore or fight suits or at least pay your prepaid lawyer service in addition to your bandwidth.

I won't donate since I'm broke but also I don't buy that he'll have a chance at staying up anyhow.
 
mshunter said:
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.
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Yup, I've read things on this one. If RunwayFinder was using these software methods first, why didn't they copyright it? Sure, the situation sucks, but the law is the law.
 
Have the defendant start a social media campaign IMMEDIATELY and stay ahead of the story. If he's not on Facebook with a "support" page, doing Tweetups, etc, might as well hang it up.

He who controls the narrative, controls the opinion.
 
Re: Runway Finder offline, Flightprep to blame

I'm going to go look later tonight when I get back to the hotel, but I do think in some RIAA related case this claim:
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.
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Was found to be full of ass leakage. Common sense dictates that every visit to runwayfinder is not lost revenue, in the same way every pirated song is not lost revenue. In no way can they claim that the person would have actually purchased the song.

For myself for instance, would never give flightprep $150(and would never ever consider it now), but I use skyvector a lot. I even donate every now and then because in all honesty I rely on it, and I know it takes money to maintain servers. But that and a bit of the guys time is all it's worth. I can go to the FAA's website and download the raster images. They are publicly available, so what skyvector at least is doing, is making it much easier to access the information that is already free.

BTW, in SoCal for the month probably...
 
Re: Runway Finder offline, Flightprep to blame

z987k said:
...Common sense dictates that every visit to runwayfinder is not lost revenue, in the same way every pirated song is not lost revenue. In no way can they claim that the person would have actually purchased the song. ...
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Thus the use of the word "potential".
 
Cessnaflyer said:
Where does it say that? I couldn't find anything about it in the "About Us" and "Privacy" links that are on the bottom right.
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Obviously they will not release any details of the agreement but I am sure we all know money changed hands.


Skyvectors official statement on the matter:
http://skyvector.com/forum/[title-raw]-12

Along with many others, we are deeply saddened to watch the ugliness unfold. We continue to hold out hope that an agreement can be swiftly reached that allows Runwayfinder.com to continue to operate.
As far as we know, SkyVector was the first licensee of the FlightPrep patent. As is typical with such licenses, we cannot disclose the terms or reveal the details of the negotiations. For this reason we have kept silent.
We even took the extraordinary step of locking a forum thread that had begun to accumulate some of the outrage. This was done because SkyVector is forbidden to talk about the patent or the terms of the license. We honestly don't know what our liability would be for a comment posted on our forums and if that could cause us to be in breach of our license agreement.
Some have taken to assigning to SkyVector some of the blame for what is happening to RunwayFinder. They argue that by purchasing a license we have contributed to the problem. If this is even partly true then we are deeply sorry. We purchased the license only out of a desire to continue to operate.
Dave Parsons and I did speak by telephone before SkyVector bought the license. I told him that we had entered into a NDA and that I was expecting to successfully negotiate a license agreement. He didn't tell me what to do and I didn't tell him what to do. I am deeply saddened at what has happened so far and maintain hope that it can be fairly resolved.
-Dave
 
Homebrew (runwayfinder) needs to hit the social media networks like yesterday. Each minute he doesn't, he's letting someone else craft the narrative.
 
Until the men in black go after fltplan.com, I dont really care :)

Whats wrong wth skyvector? Isnt it the same thing?
 
SIUav8er said:
Until the men in black go after fltplan.com, I dont really care :)

Whats wrong wth skyvector? Isnt it the same thing?
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more or less same idea.

Runway finder is nicer for a trip that goes between sectionals, in skyvector you have to switch to different sectionals, which is great since we have to do it in real life, but also sucks when I wanna see the route.

Also another FANTASTIC feature of Runwayfinder is the circle.

example: KFXE:50 it creates a circle around KFXE of 50 nm. it's great for knowing what exactly is a XC, basically anything outside the circle. Or you could do KFXE:100 and to plan for a short little hour hop, or whatever your desires are!
 
Hopefully FlightPrep patents EFB's and gets all rights to distribution and production, so we can all use those quality products.
 
I dont understand this. Does everyone not believe in patent law? Flightprep has the patent, Runwayfinder does not. It does not matter who created the technology first if it was not patented. If people totally disregard patent law, what would be the incentive for inventors to create new technology?
 
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