It was announced this week that Traffic.com received a patent on its animation technology for traffic flow at real-time. U.S. Patent No. 7,116,326, entitled "Method of displaying traffic flow data representing traffic conditions," issued on October 3, 2006 and includes 97 method and traffic-flow map claims for displaying traffic conditions on a road map. The first claim of the patent is a method of "displaying traffic flow data representing traffic conditions on a road system" comprising the creation of a graphical map including one or more segments, "determining a status of each segment on the graphical map, the status of each segment corresponding to the traffic flow data associated with that segment," and creating an animated map by "combining the graphical map and the status of each segment." This method further comprises real-time updates of traffic flow, whereby the traffic flow map reflects the real-time data and the "animated traffic flow map depicts artificial moving images." This is the first U.S. patent issued and assigned to Traffic.com, noting that the company has two additional published applications (U.S. Patent Application Serial Nos. 10/463,056, entitled "Remote radio spectrum information acquisition," and 10/611,494, entitled "Method of creating a virtual traffic network") related to its traffic technologies.

U.S. Patent No. 7,116,326: LINK
MSN/AP Article: LINK
Traffic.com Website: LINK