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Khan Academy Seeks Patents On Learning Computer Programming, Social Programming
theodp writes: When it announced its brand new Computer Science platform in August 2012, Khan Academy explained it drew inspiration from both Bret Victor and GitHub (SlideShare). Still, that didn't stop Khan Academy from eventually seeking patents on its apparently Victor-inspired Methods and Systems for Learning Computer Programming and GitHub-inspired Systems and Methods for Social Programming, applications for which were quietly disclosed by the USPTO earlier this year. Silicon Valley legal powerhouse Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which provides a pro bono team of 20+ to assist billionaire-backed Khan Academy with its legal needs, filed provisional patent applications for KA in August 2013 — provisional applications can be filed up to 12 months following an inventor's public disclosure of the invention — giving it another 12 months before formal claims had to be filed (KA's non-provisional applications were filed in August 2014).
This is absurdly broad. Anyone want to venture prior art?
A computer-implemented method for providing output(s) of machine readable instructions comprises providing software comprising one or more lines of machine-readable instructions. The one or more lines are associated with an output upon execution by a computer processor, and the output comprises at least one visual and/or audible component. Next, the software is executed using a computer processor to generate the output. The one or more lines of machine-readable instructions and the output are then displayed on an electronic display of the user. In some cases, the one or more lines of machine-readable instructions and the output are displayed on a web-based user interface on the electronic display. Based on one or more edits received from the user, the one or more lines of machine-readable instructions and the output are then updated. In some cases, the machine-readable instructions are updated without re-executing the software.
Khan Academy is a non-profit.
The defensive purpose is against patent trolls who may try to sue the Khan Academy.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
If they don't patent this, someone else will. Because we now have a "first to file" system, where prior art doesn't matter if the prior artist never patented it.
That's not true at all. The only thing that "first to file" changes from "first to invent" is interference practices: previously, if Alice and Bob both filed patent applications for the same exact invention, they would go onto an interference, which is like a mini-litigation, to determine which of them actually conceived of the invention first. They cost between $20-50k for each party, and there were on average about 20 per year... out of over half a million patent applications filed each year. Under the new system, it's just a question of who filed their application first.
First to file has literally nothing to do with prior art. And prior art that was never patented absolutely matters - white papers, scientific journals, product literature, etc. can be and are all used as prior art, even under the first to file system.