"34. In a March 21, 2014 TED interview with journalist Charlie Rose regarding Project Loon, Google co-founder Larry Page claimed that Google had been thinking of the idea of launching balloons for “five years or more.” During the course of the interview, Mr. Rose asked “But are you at the mercy of the wind?” to which Mr. Page responded: “Yeah, but it turns out, that we did some weather simulations which probably hadn’t really been done before, and if you control the altitude of the balloons, which you can do by pumping air into them or other ways, you can actually control roughly where they go, and so we think we can build a worldwide mesh of these balloons over the whole planet.”
35. As set forth above, however, Space Data had reduced this theory and simulations to actual practice and had conducted over 15,000 flights and accrued over 100,000 flight hours of such constellations in order to understand the wind patterns by the time Larry Page and other individuals from Google had visited Space Data. This concept of “if you control the altitude you can actually control roughly where they go” was something Space Data demonstrated in February 2008 to Larry Page personally with over a dozen balloons in the sky which were actively flying at Space Data’s network control center."
The comment from Page seems a little disingenuous if the statement from Space Data is true, of course it's a complaint so everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt but if it's true that seems pretty damning.
Jules Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863)
>This concept of “if you control the altitude you can actually control roughly where they go” was something Space Data demonstrated in February 2008 to Larry Page personally with over a dozen balloons in the sky which were actively flying at Space Data’s network control center."
for just this reason. The "concept" is, and has been for 300 years, the realization that allowed balloonists to steer their craft.
I suspect they have a point, though, even if it's not well made. If they've done enough experimentation to prove they can maintain the position of their balloons at all times (or nearly so) well enough to create a reliable network, that probably qualifies as a trade secret. Knowing that something is possible gets you halfway to copying it.
It's not clear to me exactly what has Google allegedly infringed upon.
Haha, well I just started taking this complaint a lot less seriously.
"Examples of Space Data confidential information and trade secrets include, but are not limited to, accumulation of weather data, launch methods, launch timing, balloon types, altitude regulation, business methods, business models, financial information, technology solutions, and unique knowledge and interpretation of weather data, wherein this knowledge and interpretation is not available in public, which for example includes knowledge of the winds between 60,000 and 100,000 foot altitudes. "