Obviousness

As a technical patent analyst, I must first clarify that the full claims of US patent 8798647 are not provided in the prompt. A complete obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 typically requires examining the specific language of each claim against identified prior art documents.

Furthermore, the "Prior Art" section provided for US8798647 does not list specific prior art patent documents by number. Instead, it describes general concepts and existing commercial services that constitute the prior art. Therefore, this analysis will rely on the patent's own characterization of the prior art and the problems it sought to solve, as described within the provided text, rather than specific patent or publication references. The priority date for this analysis is April 4, 2005.

Summary of Prior Art (as described by US8798647):

The patent identifies the following as existing prior art:

• One-way location sharing services: This includes services like On Star and Mercedes Benz TeleAid, where a central aid center can track a car's location via GPS and cellular communication. It also includes "Other commercial services" that allow parents to track their children's locations.
• Limitations of existing prior art:
  • These services were characterized by "one way location sharing." Specifically, "None of these services allow the occupants of the car to know where the aid center is or allows the children to know where their parents are".
  • "the prior art kid tracking systems could not be reconfigured in the field to add new individuals with whom location information was to be shared".

Identified Needs by US8798647 (Problems the invention aimed to solve):

The patent explicitly states the needs that its invention addresses, which highlight the deficiencies of the prior art:

• A system for motorists, hikers, pilots, and boatmen "to allow them to be able to contact rescuers and know the location of the rescuers as they come to the aid of the stranded person and to allow the rescuers to know the location of the victims they are trying to rescue". This points to a need for mutual location sharing in rescue scenarios.
• "cell phones have the capability to be reconfigured in the field to add an “instant buddy” to the list of people with whom location information is shared". This emphasizes the need for dynamic, on-the-fly establishment of location sharing relationships.

Obviousness Analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (Conceptual):

Given the patent's description of prior art, a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) in the field of mobile telecommunications, GPS, and location-based services around April 2005 would possess knowledge of:

• Wireless communication networks and devices (e.g., "cell phones" and "Personal Digital Assistants" with "GPS receivers" and "web enabled" capabilities).
• The ability to send and receive digital data, including location data (e.g., TCP/IP packets over the internet via cellular networks).
• Server-based applications for managing user data and facilitating communication.
• Graphical user interfaces (GUI) for mobile devices.

Without specific claims, we can hypothesize that the core inventive concept of US8798647 involves enabling mutual location sharing and dynamic, in-field establishment of "instant buddy" relationships between wireless device users, mediated by a server.

A hypothetical combination of the described prior art elements that might render claims related to these core concepts obvious could be as follows:

1. Combination: One-way car tracking services (like On Star/TeleAid) + One-way kid tracking systems + General mobile communication applications with "buddy lists" (e.g., instant messengers).

2. Motivation to Combine:

   • Motivation for Mutual Location Sharing: The patent itself clearly articulates the "need" for both parties (e.g., a stranded person and a rescuer, or a child and a parent) to know each other's location, directly addressing the unidirectional limitation of the prior art. A POSITA, recognizing this evident drawback of existing one-way tracking, would logically be motivated to extend the known one-way system to a two-way system. Since mobile devices were already capable of determining and transmitting their own GPS locations (as seen in the one-way prior art for the tracked party, and for E911 services), it would be a straightforward design choice to allow the tracking party's location to also be transmitted to the tracked party, and vice versa, via the established cellular network infrastructure and a central server (e.g., the "Buddy Watch server" described in the patent). This would simply involve expanding the data flow and display capabilities to include the reciprocal location information.
   • Motivation for Dynamic "Instant Buddy" Relationships: The patent explicitly states that "the prior art kid tracking systems could not be reconfigured in the field to add new individuals with whom location information was to be shared". This highlights a clear problem: static, pre-defined relationships were insufficient for ad-hoc scenarios. A POSITA seeking to enhance location-sharing services for practical, dynamic situations (e.g., a roadside emergency requiring a tow truck, or friends meeting at an event) would be motivated to enable users to establish temporary location-sharing relationships in the field. The concept of adding "buddies" or "contacts" on-the-fly was well-known in other mobile communication applications (e.g., instant messaging, social networks). Applying this existing paradigm of dynamic contact management to location sharing, where a request is sent, acknowledged, and then mutual location data exchange is initiated, would be a natural extension to address the recognized need for flexibility. The technical implementation, involving packet transmission to a central server for authentication and routing (as described for the "Instant Buddy Setup process" in FIGS. 17A and B, and 22), would leverage standard client-server communication protocols and mobile application development techniques known to a POSITA.

In summary, without the specific claims, it appears the patent's own description of prior art and identified problems provides a strong motivation for a POSITA to combine existing elements of one-way location tracking with known mobile communication and dynamic contact management principles to achieve mutual and dynamically configurable location sharing. The technical means to implement such a system using existing cellular and GPS technologies, and web-enabled mobile devices, would likely be considered within the grasp of a POSITA at the time of the invention.