"Kyler Laird" wrote in message
...
Thomas Borchert writes:

I hate to burst the bubble, but CV's cones of safety have been around
pretty much since the
first version of their software, which must be at least three years ago.

Is it really just a cone? They don't take wind, turning requirements,
or terrain into account? (They don't handle air data, do they?)

Regardless, I hate that we encourage companies to patent obvious stuff
like this. What does it mean that they just patented something they've
been using for years?

--kyler

Kyler,

Chelton Flight System's Prick Rice (dyslexic but appropriate spelling) has a
patent for the airplane-centric version of this for an implementation that
draws a glide area based on wind and terrain. I agree with you that
software patents for inherently obvious functions are bunk. There are only
so many ways to depict a glide area, and physics are physics so anyone with
knowledge of aviation and software would come up with this so it really
isn't all that novel.

Dean