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Comment by josaka | Hacker News Reader

The claim says images must be captured "from a height of about three feet." Put your cameras at five feet or two feet and feel bad for these folks paying tens of thousands of dollars to own "about three feet."

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"I put my camera about 5 feet high, not 3" is something that will need to be argued in court, which means you already lost.

This is why loser-pays-legal-fees legislation is so crucial.

This would be a situation where you have to look at the body text, not just the claims, because they could under certain circumstances file an amended claim set, so long as the new claims are anticipated by the body text.

Note: I'm not a patent lawyer, but have a handful of patents and have helped my employer with addressing patent related issues.

That's a great point. If a broader claim is both supported by the specification and they could get it past the prior art, they could try for broader reach in a continuation patent application. To do so, though, they'd have to file the continuation before this patent issued. Checking USPTO records, it appears they did not.

Unfortunately, you are wrong. There is a continuation pending - you can look it up at http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair under application number 13/220,621. The claims in this application appear to be broader than those that were issued. They can also file any number of continuations they want off of this pending application.

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