Google has pending patent on my idea. What to do?

Can qwiki uphold their pending patent?

• Qwiki filed a pretty generic patent application about getting data from websites and generating an animation.  Does this mean that nobody else can do this type of thing for a different application? ie. Animations based on Data/Reviews from Yelp or data pulled from your social networks for your own animated slideshow, etc? http://Animoto.com already connects to facebook to download content and creates an amazing slideshow with music or narration.  They also have a patent pending for "cinematic AI".   Also, http://slide.com has been putting together animations from multiple web sources into various animation templates for years... nothing new or non-obvious here. Wouldn't this prior art render qwiki's patent (if it was approved) indefensible? http://www.google.com/patents?id=IBvhAQAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=qwiki&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=qwiki&f=false

• Answer:

  The problem is that to answer your questions, one would need to go to court, and it is likely that we're talking about over half a million dollars to resolve whatever questions would come up in a single case if both parties are entrenched. The better question in each case is which party or parties would survive summary judgment in such a case.  Prior art arguments aren't going to end a case before fact-finding, so you're either faced with invalidating the patent by petitioning the USPTO (highly unlikely) or needing to fight the whole case. The pragmatic answer to your question is that if Qwiki and Animoto get their patents, they will likely be able to extract money from others who are arguably in their respective spaces.