> Supporters of open standards criticise the what3words system for being controlled by a private business and the software for being patented and not freely usa

> Supporters of open standards criticise the what3words system for being controlled by a private business and the software for being patented and not freely usable.[26] That similar addresses are purposely far away from each other is also seen by some as a disadvantage. > The company has pursued an assertive policy of issuing copyright claims against individuals and organisations that have hosted or published files of the what3words algorithm or reverse-engineered source code that replicates the service's functionality, such as WhatFreeWords. This has extended to removing comments on social media which refer to unauthorised versions. From wikipedia. Unfortunately this isn't something you can really ever use in your own code.