Freedom in Learning Innovations
I received this from the Masie Center today. I was wary of posting it at first, but I have faith in Elliott Masie, so I’m going forward with posting it, assuming it is legit. If I discover it is incorrect in any way, I’ll amend this post accordingly:
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.
Continued after the jump.
