Mjukvarupatent hotar elearning

Jag fick idag kännedom om att ett mindre företag – tydligen utan annan verksamhet än att ta ut patent – hävdar att de har patent på en rad företeelser inom elearningområdet. Som framgår av det citerade nyhetsbrevet från Elliott Masie nedan så handlar det bl.a. om patent på att bryta upp dokument i lärobjekt och att spåra lärande baserat på testresultat. Bara tanken på att dessa företeelser kunnat patenterats verkar ju rätt absurd men så är det ju också i USA det sker. Problemet aktualiserar dock igen det pågående arbetet inom EU där det föreligger en uppenbar risk att sådant skulle kunna förekomma även här.

Urgent: Freedom for Learning Innovations!

Dear Learning & Training Colleagues:

I am appealing to you for immediate help to stop a disruptive set of
lawsuits that threaten the heart and soul of the e-Learning innovation
process.

In a nutshell, one small company has applied for and received a number of
patents that they claim stake out their ownership of a wide range of the
processes underlying e-Learning. For example, they claim to have patented
the process of tracking learning based on jobs or test performance. In
addition, they claim to own the patents that break documents into learning
objects; and even to use one computer to access learning data from another
computer via a network.

They have gotten the patents and have filed multi-million dollar suits
against several of the e-Learning companies. A few of the e-Learning
companies have settled to avoid the huge cost of litigation and the fear
of losing in a trial. In conversations with the CEO’s of Learning and
Technology companies, it is clear that these lawsuits are going to add
increased costs that will be passed along to the customers, as well as
have a chilling effect on the e-Learning innovation process.

We MUST join together to overturn these patents by showing them to be
false and without basis. The company that is filing these suits is
called IpLearn (www.iplearn.com) They are a company with no products and
a patent attorney. Iplearn calls their business activity:
“intellectualware” They filed their patents between 1996 and 1999.

To overturn these highly questionable patents what the industry needs to
do is to gather a full set of “Prior Art” that documents that e-Learning,
learning technology, adaptive testing and network based learning pre-dated
the papers written by these patent holders.

The MASIE Center is organizing a Freedom of Learning Innovation Project
with 2 simple goals:

1) Build a public domain listing of any individuals or companies that have
“Prior Art” that can be used to defend against these claims. If you have
printed manuals, software or other documentation showing the use of these
processes prior to 1996 please contact us. If you were personally
involved as a developer, customer or academic with adaptive testing or
network based learning prior to 1996, please contact us. We will build a
reference list of resources that can be used by any company defending
against the IpLearn lawsuits.

2) We want to provide STRONG SUPPORT for e-Learning companies to NOT
SETTLE these suits. As customers and users of e-Learning, we do not want
our vendors subject to this process of intimidation. There are clear
needs for reform of the Patent Process that allows these questionable
patents to be granted. But, in the meantime, customers of e-Learning
vendors must give them the support and backbone to fight and defend
against these suits. Tell your suppliers to join together to fight back!

Please send me an email to emasie@masie.com if you can help in anyway.
Yours in learning,

Elliott Masie
President, The MASIE Center
Founder, The e-Learning CONSORTIUM
www.masie.com
emasie@masie.com

Jag fick idag kännedom om att ett mindre företag – tydligen utan annan verksamhet än att ta ut patent – hävdar att de har patent på en rad företeelser inom...