Oct 7, 2010 12:50 GMT  ·  By

Patents come easy when you're a multi-billion dollar company. Facebook just scored a patent that covers location services. The patent, as is almost always the case, is very broad and any number of services could be threatened by it, including Google Latitude, Foursquare, Gowalla and so on.

The patent in question, dubbed "Systems and methods for automatically locating web-based social network members," covers a method for receiving and sharing the location of a user.

"A method of sharing locations of users participating in a social networking service at a geographic location, the method executed by a computer system," reads the patent application.

"[R]eceiving location information and status information from a mobile device of a first user of the social networking service, the location information representing a geographic location of the first user, the status information manually provided by the first user on an input module of the mobile device," it continues.

"[A]ssociating the location information with the status information of the first user in a database; and sending the status information and the location information of the first user to a second user for display," it adds.

The patent the goes on to list methods which are either expansions of the components above, or variations concerning the type of input.

Basically, it means getting the location data from a device, using GPS but not necessarily, and getting "entered information," meaning a status update, from a user, in various ways.

It then covers ways for others to get access to the location and status update info published by the user.

The very same patent could be used to describe any number of services, some in existence before Facebook even filed for it in 2007.

Dennis Crowley's service Dodgeball which he sold to Google in 2005 comes to mind. Crowley went on to create Foursquare, yet another service which could be covered by the patent.

Facebook won't use the patent offensively, for now

Most people agree that Facebook won't use the patent offensively. Most big companies prefer to stock up on patents to ensure they don't get sued by other big companies or patent trolls.

Facebook already has a number of patents, it owns many of the ones relating to social networking which it acquired from Friendster. It has shown no intention of using them so far.

Successful companies almost never use patents as a fighting tool. Facebook doesn't need patents to stay ahead of the game, the fact that it has 500 million users and virtually no competition proves that.

And it doesn't need patents to make a stance in the location game either, Facebook Places is already one of the most used services of its kind, precisely because of the social network's scale.

But, then again, neither did Microsoft or any other company in its prime. It was only later, when it was getting overtaken by smaller and more nimble companies that Microsoft started suing startups instead of competing with them.

Sun is another example, the company amassed a huge number of patents thanks to its great innovation culture. No one worried that Sun would start suing people by using their patents. But now that Oracle took over, things have changed.

The same could happen to Facebook. It may reach a point when it sees no more growth, when its entrenched position will be in peril from companies which will be more innovative.

And it's precisely then when patents like this will come in handy to stop those companies, even though patents were invented as a way of protecting innovation.