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Online Testing Patented
An anonymous reader writes "For those who think that online testing is an obvious idea, please be advised that the USPTO recently issued U.S. Patent No. 6,513,042 for online testing to two Ohio inventors. According to an article in NEOhio CrainTech, "As of last week, Test Central Inc. in Cleveland owns the U.S. patent to conduct testing via the Internet and, in essence, owns the online testing business.""
*runs and patents slashdot trolling before it's too late*
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
It will be interesting to see what this does for Colleges and Universities, at the university I attended they were pushing for 50% of all classes to be offered online by 2010. This included quizzes and tests.
g
In claim 1:
If there is no money involved you do not violate this patent. If you pay for a course and take a test as part of that course there are other ways around itIn claim 13:
There must be at least two parties making money of the testing. The first being the test maker and the second being the person who owns testing computer. If you make your own tests and host the tests on your own computer, you do not infringe.There are also claims about creating and filing tests. It appears that if you were to choose a category for your test and then create the test in that category you would not infringe. (As opposed to creating the test, putting it in a temporary folder, and then moving it to the proper place as covered by the patent.)
Although I am skilled in the art, I am no patent lawyer. The patent system says that only a patent lawyer, and not somebody skilled in the art can say what a patent is about, so run this by your patent lawyer before making tests online.
We complete the site in early 1996. I see that this company APPLIED for their patent in 1999.
While I know that our system was one of the early testing systems available - it was by no means the only one.
Again, another example of an utterly failed patent system awarding patents where prior art is VERY obvious.
My favourite line in the whole article is made by Mr. Posch at the end of the story:
... They applied in 1999 for this! I had already written online test sites, with accompanying software for both teachers and students (even embedded MySQL in the LAN Server installation version of the software, and the MySQL ODBC driver in the LAN client version!.) Also, I seem to remember this tiny company in Redmond, Washington offering some tests online through their MSDN program. And then there was that nobody of a company in New York, offering exams via the internet for S/390 AS/400 AIX etc. etc. Brown Institute has been whining about tests online since '98 ... it goes on and on with VERY obvious known examples of prior art!
"We're trying to give them the impression that we want to work with them."
So, does this mean the DON'T want to work with them? How do you "try" to give an impression? Couldn't that be considered slightly redundant?
My problems this whole patent (an most others lately) are 1) There's the matter of "prior art"
And then 2) it's OBVIOUS AS ALL HELL! Non-proxied distance learning (including exams) are decades old -- hell, Meathead's wife was droning on about them back in the early 80's -- adding the internet as the base media is as obvious as adding the post was, and adding teleconferences, and adding VCR's (and even LaserDiscs for a while). I was under the impression that prior art and blatant obviousness were both disqualifiers for a patent; what about the combination? Is it like simple math -- prior art? That's 1 negative! oh, it's also obvious? That's another! lets see now, we have two negatives, bad things multiply problems it must be a good patent then!
If you want to holla back at the USPTO, and tell them how much prior art has gone through these precise methods, you can mail them the below addresses, quoted from the USPTO site:
----------
Please address mail to be delivered by the United States Postal Service
(USPS) as follows:
Box
Commissioner for Patents
Washington, D.C. 20231
Please address mail to be delivered by other delivery services (Federal
Express (Fed Ex), UPS, DHL, Laser, Action, Purolater, etc.) as follows:
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
2011 South Clark Place
Customer Window, Box
Crystal Plaza Two, Lobby, Room 1B03
Arlington, Virginia 22202
---------
You can also call them at: 800-PTO-9199 (800-786-9199) or 703-308-HELP (703-308-4357)
Personally, I'd quote them a dozen or so sites that use online tests regularly, especially for-profit (i guess thespark.com doesn't qualify =P) and then mention the general case of Universities, who are slowly moving towards great use of online tests to ease their administrative loads. I'm sure enough comments can get a patent reviewed.
-Steve
Yeah, we had this at CMU back in the late 80's.
Which brings me to a funny story. There was this one "logic" class that was taken almost entirely online, tests and all, except for some optional lectures. I was dating this really dumb girl at the time ("blonde, all the way to the brain stem"), who just didn't get *anything* about the class. And she kept going to the professor and complaining that it was too hard, and it didn't make sense, and so on.
So I think she ended up with a D for the class, which was probably generous, and she went to complain one final time. At that meeting the professor *admitted* to her that the whole thing was a sham. It wasn't a logic class at all. It was in reality, a giant psychological test to study how people react under extreme stress. And she was one of the subjects. She was vindicated! She knew it all along!
Now I knew the professor, and he was a really cool guy, with just a bit of a mean streak. Of course CMU wouldn't let a professor conduct a covert semester-long psych experiment on students. (And a math professor at that.) That guy must still laugh about the story he told to this poor girl. I know I do.
Anyway, my point was... oh yeah, the prior art thing.