It covers a system for sharing information about users (e.g. location, how to contact them) who have GPS-equipped phones that transmit location and some other information back to a central server. There's also some tomfoolery in there about how the server needs to store data for different users at different memory locations, but that's not particularly relevant or interesting, and frankly looks like obscurantist padding meant to make the patent seem more specific and novel than it really is.
It does seem to cover what Foursquare does. Of course, it does this by being obvious, and not in any way advancing the state of the art. I can't think of any good argument for why the patent system should cover things like this, and yet here it is.
EDIT: The other patent is similarly obvious. It's short, so check out the claims:
http://www.google.com/patents/US7343165
It covers a system for sharing information about users (e.g. location, how to contact them) who have GPS-equipped phones that transmit location and some other information back to a central server. There's also some tomfoolery in there about how the server needs to store data for different users at different memory locations, but that's not particularly relevant or interesting, and frankly looks like obscurantist padding meant to make the patent seem more specific and novel than it really is.
It does seem to cover what Foursquare does. Of course, it does this by being obvious, and not in any way advancing the state of the art. I can't think of any good argument for why the patent system should cover things like this, and yet here it is.
EDIT: The other patent is similarly obvious. It's short, so check out the claims:
http://www.google.com/patents/US7475057