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NeoMedia Technologies patented the technology behind camera phone barcode scanning a decade ago and they are in current litigation with ScanBuy, who saw their copyright infringement charges against NeoMedia dissmissed last year. Currently NeoMedia's Patent Infringement counter-suit against ScanBuy remains pending and will undoubtably be upheld later this year. NeoMedia has thus far won copyright infringement cases brought against Virgin Entertainment, LScan, and AirClick.

PocketCaster™ GPS application which took top honors in the competition and walked away with $50K in cash (and $10k for winning the Business Application category) +$100k in Navteq data licenses. The application is designed to take advantage of camera phones (video) with integrated GPS capabilities (like the new Nokia N95). Simply put, the app enables simple, one-button mobile web casting where the user can stream video live to a web server while the application also embeds data, time, and geopositioning information into the video stream. The user’s location can be tracked and viewed dynamically on a mashup (like a Google map) or with Navteq data while the video is streaming and the user location is continually updated. Comvue is the developer of the popular Comvue PocketCaster application, enabling users to stream live video to websites, blogs, or other web apps. See http://www.comvu.com/

Consumer usage of LBS-enabled apps is growing rapidly, with the most popular use being maps and directions, location search, nearby entertainment location, and perhaps the most highly anticipated segment (as seen and heard at the CTIA conference) LBS gaming. Driving the uptake of Location services are the growing number of GPS-enabled phones, with GSM devices like the Nokia N95 and 6610 “navigator” now penetrating the space (finally). The ever increasing important of local search (i.e. what’s near me) as well ass community and content sharing is also propelling the demand and usage of location in the mobile arena – think about it. Just imagine what you can do when your cell phone knows exactly where you are and then shares that location with applications and services!