Re: [Bodington-developers] petition against upcoming software patents from teaching and learning perspective

[Selwyn L. <sel...@ph...>]

Sean et al,

In a recent case with HEI 'xx' a project was not funded because of IP 
rights not being retained by the HEI.
Despite our assertion that IP rights were vested in the community and 
furthermore HEI xx would still maintain the IP rights for their unique 
uses of the generic system, HEI xx seemed uniterested.
We tried to explain that the content product such as a software based 
learning package could still be deemed 'theirs', so clearly there is 
much sentiment with in education to protect and exploit software based IP.

I would say its understandable that indiviuals and individual HEI's, 
FEI's and even schools want to maintain their IP, perhaps even create 
commercial opportunities, so my concern is where the differences are 
between patentable system and copyrightable content... My own experience 
of UK patent law is most software is not patentable, particularly at the 
generic level.

I imagine that most content is protectable and many will want to protect 
there software based learning packages.

I would consider patenting system only to
a. to protect against large commercial organisations exploiting the same 
or reverse engineered process and somehow blocking our own rights to use 
the technology by patenting first
b. to protect the investment of a community

The whole process of protecting intellectual property stifles creativity 
IMHO and should be avoided by those making and doing things :) life is 
to short, if your organisation can afford a person who enjoys this 
challenge pass it on to them on the other hand if I made a living purely 
from my creative outputs then I would want to be in an organisation that 
would protect them ethically.

Cheers


Sel


Sean Mehan wrote:

> Dear Bodders,
>
> I am part of a working party that has been trying to organize 
> opposition to upcoming proposed legislation aimed at implementing 
> prohibitive software patents that would hamper teaching and learning. 
> Please go 
> to http://flosse.dicole.org/?item=don-t-allow-software-patents-to-threaten-technology-enhanced-learning-in-europe 
> and read it, and if you agree that this would be a bad thing, consider 
> signing the petition.
>
> Thanks,
> Sean Mehan
>
>
>
>
>
> Sean Mehan
>
> Head of e-Frameworks
>
> Learning and Information Services
>
> UHI - www.uhi.ac.uk <http://www.uhi.ac.uk>
>
> www.weblogs.uhi.ac.uk/sm00sm/
>
> --------------------
>
> GuanXi - a SAML/Shibboleth IdP, SP and Toolkit - 
> http://guanxi.sourceforge.net/
>
> --------------------
>
> Bodington - a Free VLE - http://bodington.sourceforge.net/
>
>
>