Patent ID: 7382290

Claim:
The process of creating a map overlay that is overlaid onto an area of interest that includes a point of interest, said process comprising: defining an area of interest by determining North, South, East and West boundaries; defining an origin having a location that is at least on a boundary that defines the area of interest; creating a grid system having a first plurality of grids represented by two sets of characters, each set of characters comprising from one to four characters, a value of each character corresponding to a value from 1 to 35; determining whether a point of reference lies within the defined area of interest by first determining whether a latitude of the point of interest is between the North and South boundaries of the area of interest and then determining whether a longitude of the point of interest is between the East and West boundaries of the area of interest; converting the Latitude of the point of interest into a percentage by creating a first variable, Temp 1 (Lat) and defining it as being equal to the value of the Latitude of the point of interest minus the value of the Latitude of the South boundary divided by a difference between the value of the North boundary less the value of the South boundary and being represented as Temp 1 (Lat)=(Lat−S)/(N−S); creating a second variable, Temp 2 (Lat), where Temp 2 (Lat) is defined as (35 4 −1)×(Temp 1 (Lat)); determining a value of a first character in a first set of characters that represents a location code by defining the first character as being equal to an integer value of Temp 2 (Lat) divided by 35 3 ; converting the Longitude of the point of interest into a percentage by creating a third variable, Temp 1 (Lon) and defining it as being equal to the equal to the value of the Longitudinal of the point of interest minus the value of the East boundary divided by a difference between the value of the West boundary less the value of the East boundary; creating a fourth variable, Temp 2 (Lon), where Temp 2 (Lon) is defined as (35 4 −1)×(Temp 1 (Lon)); and, determining a value of a first character in a second set of characters that represents the location code by defining the first character of the second set as being equal to an integer value of Temp 2 (Lon) divided by 35 3 .