Patent ID: 8478297

Claim:
A method of identifying a WiFi access point that is suspected to have moved relative to location information associated with the WiFi access point which is recorded in a reference database, the method comprising: at least one of a mobile WiFi-enabled device and a server system in communication with the mobile WiFi-enabled device receiving information identifying at least one WiFi access point in range of the mobile WiFi-enabled device; at least one of the mobile WiFi-enabled device and the server system in communication with the mobile WiFi-enabled device accessing a reference database to retrieve location information associated with the identified WiFi access point recorded in the reference database, the location information specifying a previously-determined approximate location of the identified WiFi access point; at least one of the mobile WiFi-enabled device and the server system in communication with the mobile WiFi-enabled device comparing the recorded location information associated with the identified WiFi access point to location information associated with WiFi access points observed by the mobile WiFi-enabled device during a period of time to infer whether the identified WiFi access point has moved from its previously-determined approximate location that is recorded in the reference database, the inferring including determining whether (a) the recorded location information associated with the identified WiFi access point is more than a threshold distance from the location information associated with WiFi access points observed by the mobile WiFi-enabled device during the period of time or (b) the recorded location information associated with the identified WiFi access point is within the threshold distance from the location information associated with WiFi access points observed by the mobile WiFi-enabled device during the period of time.