In some cities one can access a service that allows one to walk through buildings in a virtual reality way, and, for example, assess internal damage and maintenance, or hazards. The data is captured by people who walk through buildings with cameras affixed to backpacks. That facility would vastly improve any games built on the concept of accurate cityscape data.
If one looks at NEA's expansion from the perspective of getting more usage from captured data, that implies focusing on existing verticals and having an open mind on possible new usage fields.
If one took a customer perspective view, and one had customers that wanted more than the external image of buildings, NEA could consider offering it. It is probably a non-viable idea per se, and non-viable in terms of opportunity cost (that is bang for buck relative to new initiatives to extract more value from its captured data in its current metier, aerial photography.
To go off at a tangent, the word usage of Eagleview's attorney on Friday 8/10/2021 inclines me to think that Eagleview will, or has, conceded that the elements of its system are prior art, and hence not patentable, so the battle would relate to the inventive step in clagging the elements into a system. The Paten ACT itself is very poor in that area, so one has to rely on case law to see what concepts have been established via case law, and the guide thereto is the guide used by the United States Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO), and that is an astoundingly badly written document, and it would take time to read it and come up with a set of opinuions, and then wade through the document in mind to test said set of opinions. I have to a degree done Step 1, and feel that the court willrule in NEA's favour, but I have not rigorously tested it. The case is not that important, IMO, but for me it is more a matter of personal interest, so when I have time, I might address the vetting step.
The matter, IMO, is going to focus on obviousness of an inventive step. Case history has already removed mathematical and many computing-related steps from being patentable, and it seems to me that the Verisk decision was flawed, so I expect the court will rule in favour of NEA, and who knows, reverse the Eagleview win against Verisk, provided Verisk did not actually copy Eagleview's code and manuals, but that is a copyright issue, not a patent one. The same applies to what Pushpin developed, and NEA acquired. A very small percentage of NEA's business is affected by this stoush, so the court case is not all that important, IMO
