Current list of U.S. eLearning Patents and Patent Applications

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/IMM/I070524P.pdf

I believe, though could be mistaken, that this valuable list of current US e-learning patents was created by Jim Farmer at im+m.

This next comment goes in the “Scott complaining about something that is free” bin, but Jim, is there any way you could maintain this (if that is what you are doing in) in something like DabbleDB or a GoogleDoc spreadsheet? Something that automatically produces an RSS feed (and that you could give permission to others to add to, so as to not have to shoulder the burden alone).

Efforts like this that keep the community appraised are immensely valueable. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but much like the case with the Ed Tech conference listings I documented a while back, in this day and age we need to be looking at web-based formats and tools by default, ones that produce RSS and allow collaborative editing. There is simply too much too kepp track of to do otherwise, and it is only in spreading the load that we can hope to keep up. – SWL

5 thoughts on “Current list of U.S. eLearning Patents and Patent Applications”

  1. Scott, you are correct about the source. The list of U.S. parents is updated rarely. There are two URLs that may be useful. I am using an Excel spreadsheet that can be download from http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/RESOURCE/IMM/IPATENTS.xls and the formatted report from http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/RESOURCE/IMM/IPATENTS.pdf.

    About 25 patents and patent applications have been added since the 24 May version you referenced.

    I am expanding the list to see if I can identify a patent troll who is accumulating patents. So far I don’t see that pattern. Also I am interested in which applications become patents. So far most of the applications are waiting responses fto questions about obviousness–typically a non-final rejection of some or all claims.

    I expect to continue adding to the list in early July.

  2. Jim, first off thanks so much for sharing this, and more importantly, for actually doing this. I hope you understood from my remarks above that I was in no way meaning to criticize you for this effort; my suggestions about web 2.0 enabling this was more along the lines of enabling others, if they wished to support you in this important task, especially because it is not the only important (and presumably time consuming) one you offer for free to the rest of the community.

    In that spirit, in case you are interested, you can see a Zoho version of of the spreadsheet at http://sheet.zoho.com/public.do?docurl=X5GiFw62Sm3+uVm31GQvyw==&name=72Rvap+XmBI= and also see what it would look like on your own site at http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/jim_ipatents_sheet.htm. If these are at all appealing I can give you ownership of the file on Zoho, but you can also create this by importing the file into ZoHo in about 2 minutes. More importantly, if this is of interest I’d also commit to drumming up more folks to help maintain. This is the kind of thing that the elearning community at large needs to be aware of and actively monitor.

    Hope this is understood in the spirit it is offered (I’ll take it down in a heartbeat if there’s an issue) and for this work, and more generally the invaluable im m elibrary which never ceases to amaze me, thanks.

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