Google Sued Over Google Sky Feature

I say award him liquidated damages of $20 according to Sivers' Rule:<p><a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...</a>

$25 million? When was the last time anyone got $25 million just for their idea? Not even a prototype, but an idea in a blog post? ...<p>since when was a blog post a patent?

Critical sentence:<p>"Jonathan Cobb claims that <i>during his work for Google as contractor</i> he posted a complete description of Google Sky in an internal Google discussion group."<p>Who knows what kind of contract work he was doing, but I'll bet there's a clause in his contract from Google that states "All your base are belong to us." Besides, it was posted in an internal discussion group. The ideas there already belong to Google by default.

Doesn't say when he posted, but his idea sounds a lot like celestia <a href="http://www.shatters.net/celestia/" rel="nofollow">http://www.shatters.net/celestia/</a>

I emailed Google the same idea a few years ago and never heard back. It's pretty obvious.