Dynamic Location Referencing ‘AGORA-C’ licenses now available to the public upon request

Date: 14/9/2009

Source: www.tisa.org/; www.vialicensing.com/  

Via Licensing, the patent agent for the ‘AGORA-C’ location referencing technique, has announced the availability of a joint licensing programme or ‘patent pool’ for patents essential to the AGORA-C Standard.

Location referencing is the task of ensuring compatible referencing of locations when information is exchanged between different applications or systems with different geographic databases. The ISO 17572 series of standards, which was published in December 2008, defines two methods for location referencing.

The second method (ISO 17572-3), “Dynamic Location References” (DLR), works by encoding locations on the road network, such as intersections and road sections. It anticipates differences between map versions at the time of decoding and snaps to the corresponding map location when placed on a target map. DLR has evolved from the European ‘AGORA-C’ proposal and supports location referencing without needing pre-encoded locations or needing the source and destination of a message to use the same reference map. The technology enables efficient routing based upon updated traffic information and supports the development of proactive traffic management services aimed at reducing roadway congestion.

A press release from Via Licensing states that:

“The AGORA-C patent pool is Via Licensing’s first joint licensing program designed for the automotive market and includes patents from key contributors to the standard… We hope to foster the rapid adoption of AGORA-C even beyond the automotive market by providing fair and convenient access to the intellectual property essential to this standard.”

Further information can be found at www.tisa.org/ and www.itsradarinternational.info/.

ITS Radar International will continue to monitor developments in location referencing

Keywords: Geographic information, Standard, Traffic information, Traffic management