Fortnightly Mailing

2 Elsevier executives defect to Biomed Central, saying "the future is open"

2/1/2007 piece in Information World Review by Tracy Cladwell. Extract:

"Two senior publishers have departed Elsevier and joined rival Biomed Central, placing their bets on an open access future for scientific research.

Bryan Vickery joins as deputy publisher, with responsibility for the Chemistry Central portal launched in August. He will also develop a portfolio of open access journals in chemistry.

Chris Leonard will lead the development of open access titles in physics, maths and computer science."

Thanks to Rhonda Riachi for this link

Learning Light, Sheffield - Jane Hart and Vaughan Waller move on

Vaughan Waller and Jane Hart

I've reported occasionally about Learning Light, a publicly funded not-for-profit company in Sheffield that describes itself as "a centre of excellence in the use of learning technologies (e-Learning) in the workplace and organisational learning best practice"*. Last year, Learning Light recruited Jane Hart (previously Jane Knight) as its Head of Research Services, and acquired Jane's e-learning centre web site. Later in the year, Vaughan Waller joined Learning Light as Head of Membership Services. Until recently, Vaughan was Chair of the UK e-learning network, where Fortnightly Mailing is syndicated. Jane and Vaughan have now left Learning Light and set up a consultancy called WallerHart - Learning Architects.

* Disclosure. PA Consulting had the contract for getting Learning Light established, procuring a web site for it, and commissioning some research reports for Learning Light to subsequently provide to users of its services. I wrote two of these with David Jennings and David Kay, Camilla Umar, and Liz Wallis of Sero Ltd.

"Search Wikia", an eventual alternative to Google or Yahoo?

Updated 6 January 2007

There has been extensive coverage of Wikia Inc.'s project to develop a "new kind of search engine, which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot".  (Wikia Inc. is a for-profit company co-founded by Jimmy Wales, that lives alongside, but is discrete from, Wikipedia.) This updatable list of links to some of the stories, annotated by Wikia Inc., provides the flavour, and this 23 December 2006 statement by Jimmy Wales summarise the Search Wikia vision.  You can also join a mailing list (busy, with plenty of high level contributions, but there is a digest option) about the project, from where you can find, for example, this more detailed and sceptical assessment of the prospects for the project, by Danny Sullivan, or this lucid 3 January 2007 piece by Jimmy Wales summarising his views on how the project might take shape. Currently (6/1/2007) there is interest in an Open Source "distributed peer-to-peer web-indexing application" called Yacy. If I were Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft, would I be worried? Not yet. But I think people who use search for primarily narrow intellectual pursuits rather than in areas where there is a lot of active commerce, are maybe unaware of the extent to which spam and porn on the web damage the value of conventionally obtained search results. Search Wikia would, amongst other things, aim to solve this problem.

See also this 1 February 2007 link to, and extract from a New Scientist interview with Jimmy Wales.

$100 laptop could reach users by July 2007

According to this 2 January 2007 story on the BBC web site, the first batch of so called "XO" computers built for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project could reach users by July this year, with test machines to be issued in February. The BBC piece quotes Nicholas Negroponte, whose brainchild the OLPC laptop is, as follows:

"I have to laugh when people refer to XO as a weak or crippled machine and how kids should get a 'real' one. Trust me, I will give up my real one very soon and use only XO. It will be far better, in many new and important ways."

"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools."

Plenty of pictures and commentary (some of it snide) here at engadget, and these previous posts from Fortnightly Mailing may also be of interest:

• One laptop per child - further information and progress. 29 November 2006 link to piece by David Weinberger;
• What would you install on one laptop per child? 17 October 2006 Guest Contribution by Steve Ryan from talk at LSE by Jonathan Zittrain;
• The "One Laptop Per Child" wiki. 1 August 2006 posting which includes a video of a working prototype of the laptop.

 

The Venice Project - Skype founders turn their attention to internet-based TV

Updated 17/1/2007

The Venice Project, now named Joost, which is neither a file-sharing application nor a video download service, is one to watch. According to Pinsent Masons legal information bulletin:

"The Scandinavian entrepreneurs behind the wildly-popular services Kazaa and Skype are about to launch an internet television service. The advertising-supported service will comply with copyright laws, the pair said."

"Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström say that the new business, which is codenamed The Venice Project, will be based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, like Kazaa. Kazaa was a file-sharing network widely used to pass unlicensed copies of music tracks around the internet, but Venice will only distribute licensed content, the founders said."

As an aside, the project's Privacy Policy had this slightly disquieting clause:

"Using Your Personal Information in Other Countries

Your country's privacy laws may require your consent before your personal information can be exported to countries with weaker privacy laws. Since it is important to our quality of service to maintain operations within many countries, the Terms of Service requires your consent to this practice. No matter where your information is processed, this privacy policy will remain in effect."

See also Venice Project would break many users' ISP connections, from The Register.

2006: the year of Moodle

Epic plc, one of the UK's largest e-learning companies, publishes a monthly opt-in Newsletter called "epic thinking". This month's edition has a glowing assessment of Moodle which includes an interesting if slightly speculative assessment of the number of learners worldwide supported by each of the 5 most used VLEs, and number of installations of each:

	Installations	Users served
SumTotal	1,500	17m
Saba *	1,100	15m
Blackboard/WebCT	3,700	12m
Moodle	19,000	7.7m
Skillport	1,200	5m

* Saba figures represent Saba Enterprise Suite, of which the LMS is one component

UK Treasury's Gowers Review picks up on the Blackboard Patent

Updated 20/12/2006

The UK Treasury published the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property [650 kB PDF] on 6 December. The Review is likely to define UK policy on Intellectual Property for the next few years, has plenty in it that is of relevance to UK education, as this broadly (but not totally) welcoming press release from JISC makes clear. [20/12/2006] It has been strongly welcomed by the Open Rights Group. The review has references to user-generated content (for example in relation to the Sims game), and quite an extensive discussion of Open Source. The review deals with software patents in paragraphs 4.114 - 4.119 stating that "there is little evidence that software patents increase incentives", and that the "evidence suggests software patents are used strategically; that is, to prevent competitors from developing in a similar field". It concludes that "a new right for pure software patents should not be introduced, and so the scope of patentability should not be extended to cover computer programs as such". Along the way, the Review draws specific attention to the Blackboard Patent:

"Blackboard, a US maker of online learning management systems, recently took the academic community by surprise when it announced it had been granted a broad patent in the USA. The patent covers 44 claims related to learning management systems and implicated infringement by many other products on the market. On the same day that it publicly disclosed its patent, Blackboard started a patent infringement suit in a Texas court against Desire2Learn. Many companies that have been working on educational software are now concerned that Blackboard will either sue for infringement or enforce complex and expensive licensing agreements."

UN reports on dismal state of web accessibility

 

Via Pinsent Masons handy "OUT-LAW" legal developments news feed:

Ninety-seven percent of websites fail to achieve a minimum level of accessibility according to the first ever global web accessibility survey. A new UN convention aims to change that.

UK-based web accessibility agency Nomensa released its report today based on research commissioned by the United Nations.

Using a combination of manual and automated testing against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Nomensa examined the leading website in five different sectors in 20 countries, including its Head of State and leading airline, bank, newspaper and retailer. In all, the survey tested 100 websites.

Only the websites of the German Chancellor, the Spanish Government and the British Prime Minister met WCAG Level A, the minimum recognised level. No site met Level AA or higher.

World-class skills. HM Treasury publishes Leitch Review.

Update - 27/1/2007.  For four overlapping but contrasting views on the Leitch Review of Skills, by Bob Harrison, Markos Tiris, Kevin Donovan, and Donald Clarke, see the January 2007 issue of the Association for Learning Technology Newsletter.

A day earlier than some were expecting, the Treasury published the outcome from the Leitch Review of Skills: Prosperity for all in the global economy - world class skills, and [14/12/2006] there is a brief and coherent overview of the whole report on the TUC web site.

Several readers of Fortnightly Mailing will welcome the review's strong support for the work of Trade Union Learning Representatives, as well as its recognition that the emphasis must begin to shift from the provision of Level 2 training and education to Level 3.

People working in public sector education may be more anxious about the review's recommendation that routing public funding for adult vocational skills will "be through demand-led routes, ending the supply-side planning of skills provision". "Train to Gain" for employers, and, from 2010, the re-introduction of Learner Accounts for individuals will be the main ways of funding adult vocational education.  "These accounts should not be based on providing colleges with a block grant based on expected demand and clawing back the difference at the end of the academic year. Instead, colleges should receive full funding only when individuals enroll on and complete a course. This will give the best providers freedom to expand, while encouraging all providers to be more responsive to the demands of their customers – in this case, individuals."

The proposal for "rationalising the number of bodies aiming to articulate the views of employers into a single Commission for Employment and Skills" is not the throwback to the Manpower Services Commission that it might at first seem, since the latter, if I remember rightly, employed a large number of civil servants, which is not what is now envisaged. And although there will be trade union presence on the Commission, and, as mentioned above, the importance of union involvement in skills and education issues in organised workplaces is taken as read, it will not be on the old-style 50/50 basis: employers will be in the driving seat.  This squares with the overwhelming emphasis of the report that the purpose of training and education system is to produce what the labour market needs, plain and simple, with a sideline, if strong, emphasis on:

• entitling young people to training and education to a much greater extent than at present;
• pushing employers into ensuring that their workers can improve their skills, whether or not that particular employer needs them to so do.

You cannot argue with these latter two points.

Nowhere in the document do the terms personalisation or personalised (maybe that bit of mantra has not reached into the Treasury?) appear; and of on-line learning, e-learning, informal learning, or the new methods that are emerging for knowledge generation and dissemination there is no mention.  For a document concerning skills, that looks forward to 2020 (and bearing in mind that searching a PDF for key terms is sometimes a misleading way of reaching judgments of this kind!) this seems to be almost bizarre.

Finally I spotted a "dodgy" chart, reproduced below. Can anyone see what is wrong with it?

Blackboard: two separate re-examination requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an unsuccessful application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings

Originally written 2/12/2006. Updated 5/12/2006, 7/12/2006, 9/12/2006, 11/12/2006.

Two separate and almost simultaneous requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office have been issued in the US against Blackboard's US Patent 6,988,138. The first, on 17/11/2006 was issued by the New York based Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), acting in support of the makers of 3 Open Source VLE systems: Moodle, Sakai, and ATutor.  The second, on 1/12/2006, was issued by the Canadian VLE company Desire2Learn, against whom Blackboard issued patent infringement proceedings earlier in the year.   On the same day Desire2Learn also issued an application to the court [64 kB PDF] for a stay in the patent infringement proceedings pending re-examination of Patent 6,988,138 by the US Patent and Trademark Office. 5/12/2006. Within 3 days, Blackboard had filed a rapidly produced, and extremely forcefully written 16 page opposition to Desire2Learn's application to the court for a stay, plus 5 exhibits, one of which is described as "a highly confidential submission to the U.S. Department of Justice during the approval process for Blackboard's merger with WebCT, in which Blackboard sets forth in detail the competitive threat posed by Desire2Learn", and is not in the public domain. The tone and content of Blackboard's 16 page opposition shows that both companies are playing for very high stakes. There is an extract below. 7/12/2006. Desire2Learn has filed its from Al Essa, picking up on three key features of Blackboard's opposition to the stay: "We have a company that has seized community property - your property and mine - and now in broad daylight is wielding our knife to cut its competitor's throat". 11/12/2006. From the Desire2Learn patent information page: "On Friday, December 8, during a routine scheduling conference held at the courthouse in Beaumont, Texas, U.S. District Judge Clark of the Eastern District of Texas denied Desire2Learn's Motion to Stay Proceedings. We had requested that the Court stay - or put the litigation "on hold" - while the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office reexamined the Blackboard patent. Judge Clark's actions do not affect the reexamination request that we filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on December 1."

SFLC's ex partes re-examination request is short and to the point, with the main VLE-based prior art cited being the Irish VLE Top Class, which the then Aberdeen University staff member Jim Kerslake  investigated during the 1990s, and whose signed declaration is included in the SFLC re-examination request.  Jim has posted a useful summary page relating to VLEs at that time, which is a model of clarity, and is an indication of how important the careful documentation of prior art can potentially be. SFLC's other two citings are publications: Information sharing: collaborating across the networks, by MIT's Phyllis Galt and Susan Jones; and Enhancing teaching using the Internet, by Stephen Hartley, Jill Gerhardt-Powals, Richard Stockton, Colin McCormack, Dee Medley, Blaine Price, Margaret Reek, and Marguerite Summers.

Desire2Learn's inter partes re-examination request is much more complicated and includes a mass of papers (SFLC's re-examination request is at the same URL). The Desire2Learn request references: details of systems available at the time (including Ceilidh, jointly developed by at Nottingham University, and Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore); evidence relating to "role-based access control"; the previously featured EDUCOM/NLII Instructional Management Systems Specifications Document; and at least one sworn declaration. On a personal note it also includes documents relating to the 1996 Renaissance Project, an EU ACTS Project in which several Sheffield organisations, including The Sheffield College, where I then worked, had a role.

What happens next? If the court  - and it is quite a big if - grants the postponment requested by Desire2Learn (and see the extract below for part of Desire2Learn's rationale for the postponment)  then attention will switch to the 2 re-examination requests, which could possibly result in Patent 6,988,138 being deleted, or modified, or consolidated. The process will not be quick. Blackboard will already surely be aware of most if not all of the material assembled by SFLC and Desire2Learn, and you'd expect, from its apparently unfazed reaction to SFLC's re-examination request, that it will have detailed responses (which might well up the ante) to both re-examination requests, just as the company was quick to oppose Desire2Learn's application to the court for a stay.

Extract from Desire2Learn's application for a stay in the patent infringement proceedings.

The patent on which the plaintiff, Blackboard, Inc. (“Blackboard”) has asserted patent infringement is currently the subject of both an ex parte [i.e. the Software Freedom Law Center's] and an inter partes [i.e. Desire2Learn's]  reexamination request filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”). The currently pending ex parte request seeks to invalidate the patent-in-suit based on prior art that was never submitted to or considered by the PTO during the six years that the patent was in prosecution. Likewise, the inter partes reexamination request, filed by Desire2Learn Inc. (“Desire2Learn”), seeks to invalidate the patent-in-suit not only based on prior art that was not submitted to or considered by the PTO during the prosecution of the patent-in-suit, but also based on prior art that is not part of the pending ex parte request.

Because the currently pending ex parte reexamination, as well as Desire2Learn’s inter partes reexamination request, will likely narrow the issues or eliminate the need for trial and because doing so would conserve resources, Desire2Learn requests that this Court enter an order staying these proceedings pending the completion of the ex parte and inter partes reexaminations. EchoStar Technologies Corp. v. TiVo, Inc., 2006 WL 2501494, at *5 (E.D. Tex. July 14, 2006) (granting motion to stay proceedings pending an ex parte and inter partes reexamination).

Extract from Blackboard's opposition to Desire2Learn's request for a stay in the patent infringement proceedings.

Plaintiff Blackboard Inc. (“Blackboard”) filed this case in July. In the answer that Defendant Desire2Learn Inc. (“Desire2Learn”) filed in September, Desire2Learn identified alleged prior art that it asserts renders the patent-in-suit, U.S. Patent 6,988,138 B1 (the “’138 patent”), invalid. Now, in December, less than a week before the Case Management Conference, and more than six weeks after the parties agreed in their Rule 26(f) Joint Conference Report to a February 2008 trial date and a discovery schedule that has already required Blackboard to expend significant resources, Desire2Learn has filed an inter partes reexamination with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “PTO”) and simultaneously moved to stay this case. Desire2Learn’s motion is a stall tactic crafted to allow it to continue its infringement of Blackboard’s intellectual property for as long as possible. Staying the case would not create judicial efficiency. To the contrary, a stay would harm Blackboard by allowing Desire2Learn to avoid an injunction and continue to infringe Blackboard’s presumptively valid patent.

Note 1. On 2/12/2006 I gave this post a somewhat more cautious emphasis once a helpful reader had pointed out the lack of unequivocal data available on the successs rates of inter partes re-examination requests. On 3/12/2006 I added links below to two USPTO documents summarising data relating to the processing of patent re-examination requests. Reference is made to one of these documents in my response to Joseph Hardin's comment below. On 4/12/2006 I added a link to the archived Ceilidh site. On 5/12/2006 I added a note about Blackboard's opposition to the application for a stay, and an extract from that document.

Note 2. Links to USPTO documents summarising, to 30 June 2006, data concerning the processing of  ex partes re-examination requests [100 kB PDF] and inter partes re-examination requests [100 kB PDF].

Note 3. Other posts about the Blackboard patent:

• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.