As you may know, patents can be invalidated if one can demonstrate that the claimed invention was in public use or described in a published document prior to the date of the patent filing. This evidence is called “prior art.” A few of us decided that we should begin documenting prior art—not just on the Blackboard patent, but on educational technologies in general. We debated a bit about where to house the effort. I ended up creating a one-sentence stub in wikipedia on Sunday (two days ago). A couple of people mentioned it on a couple of listservs, but we didn’t advertise it widely. And yet, lo and behold, two days later we have a pretty good document that was generated by a variety of people. This morning, a colleague whom I had not spoken to about the page emailed me to point me to it and suggested that I contribute. And tonight, Stephen posted about it, which means the cat is out of the bag for sure.
The internet is a wonderful thing.
At any rate, if you have any important data to add to the page about the history of VLE development, please do so. I imagine we will eventually spawn a family of pages about related technologies (whiteboards, LCMS’s, etc.). This would be a Good Thing To Do even if the Blackboard patent fight didn’t exist.
Hi Michael, this is great. I am also starting a blog and wiki as a hub to refer to news and resources on the issue.
http://blackfate.edublogs.org/
http://blackfate.wikispaces.com/
Congratulations on what looks like a great case of a good ‘plan coming together’
Calling it a “plan” might be a bit of an overstatement; the ‘net just does its thing. But at any rate, thanks.
Announcing… WikiPatents.com - Community Patent Review (http://www.WikiPatents.com/) WikiPatents
recently became the first and only web site to enable organized public
comment on issued patents and, soon, pending patent applications.
WikiPatents was developed to strengthen the U.S. patent system by
providing increased visibility into the legal strength, technical
merits, and market aspects of each patent through public comment.
Through our combined support and participation, WikiPatents will become
an indispensable resource to increase certainty for patent Examiners,
law firms, future litigants, licensees, potential investors, inventors,
and patent owners.
The WikiPatents Community was established largely in response to the
USPTO’s recent focus on improving patent quality. “The USPTO clearly
has a responsibility to do everything it can to improve America’s patent
system. That is why we are undertaking this collaborative approach -
putting forth quality and efficiency proposals for the patent community
to give us feedback,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual
Property Jon Dudas. “Applicants and the public deserve certainty. This
focus on quality of applications and closure of the examination process
will provide more certainty. Everyone agrees that better quality input
will result in a better quality end product.” (See
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/06-26.htm) By adding and
voting on overlooked prior art and submitting public comments on the
merits of issued patents, the WikiPatents Community provides an
invaluable resource to patent Examiners reviewing related pending
applications.
Anyone can join the WikiPatents Community for free and voice concerns,
praise, comments, and opinions on any issued patent. As a member, you
can:
- Add prior art, and vote and comment on its relevancy and implications
- Add relevant links and other useful resources
- Promote specific patents by linking them to social news, bookmarking,
and networking sites
- Comment and vote on the legal strength and technical merits of patents
- Value patents by calculating market size, market share, and reasonable
royalties
- Discuss licensing options
- Add relevant information about the inventor(s) and/or owner(s) of
patents
- Comment on the legal strength and technical merits of patents
- Download free patent PDFs.
WikiPatents has exciting plans beyond its initial “beta launch” to
improve and expand the site into a thriving community of public
commentary on patents and pending patent applications. Please support
the site’s launch by adding your comments to a patent of interest.