IBM Seeks Patent On Retailer-Rigged Driving Routes 150
theodp writes "On IBM's Smarter Planet, you may drive further than need be to get to your destination. Big Blue's pending patent for Determining Travel Routes by Using Fee-Based Location Preferences calls for the likes of Walmart, Starbucks, and Best Buy pay a fee in return for having your route calculation service de-optimize driving instructions to make you do a drive-by of their stores, and an additional fee if GPS tracking of your car indicates you actually took the suboptimal route. The same IBM inventors also have a patent pending for Environmental Stewardship Based on Driving Behavior, which calls for yet another fee to be assessed when a retailer-friendly-but-suboptimal route causes your vehicle to enter a congested area and produce more pollution."
Yes or No (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM gets bonus points if they patent these then sit on them, thus disallowing anyone from actually implementing them.
Of course they could turn "Evil"
How many other evil things can we thing of to patent to prevent people from actually doing them?
No doubt, there will be a user fee as well (Score:5, Insightful)
I would bet that there is also going to be a way for the user to pay a fee not to be sent on the suboptimal route.
Just what we need get off hiway and get back onm (Score:4, Insightful)
Just what we need get off highway and get back on for each small town you pass by.
In the past I use to get stuff like that with on line maps where they keep having you get on off the same road but may of been a bug or just poor weighting.
Nah, IBM just wants to remind everyone who is boss (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just a polite cought from IBM to remind Apple, MS, Google, HP, Samsung and the likes who invented original evil. This is classy stuff, forget about silly lawsuits and threathening to sue your customers. Control their every move like the drones they are. THAT is CLASS. That is pure unadulterated evil.
Basically they are saying, "Look out, we are still here and we are still the masters of darkness. Any of you whippersnappers forget that and we will have your headquarters surrounded by a thousand sheep following our GPS to their slaughter."
I have taken the hint and re-labelled my PC as an IBM-compatible to pay homage to the master.