[8718] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Patenting Multimedia
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Judith E. Grass)
Wed Dec 1 13:59:37 1993
To: "Tansin A. Darcos & Company" <0005066432@mcimail.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 01 Dec 1993 13:23:12 EST."
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1993 13:55:32 -0500
From: "Judith E. Grass" <jgrass@cnri.reston.va.us>
>> Optical Data Corp. has announcece that _they_ have taken out a patent
>> entitled "Interactive Method for the Effective Conveyance of Information
>> in the Form of Visual Images". This patent covers the following process:
>>
>> 1. Turning on a video storage device, such as a video disc player or
>> CD-ROM, which contains a disc with video images stored therein.
>>
>> 2. A teacher selects specific portions of the disk to convey images to
>> students in response to oral questions.
>>
>> 3. The teacher gives an oral lesson which corresponds to the video
>> portion of the lecture.
>>
>> 4. The teacher accesses other portions of the disc in response to new
>> student questions, either by fast-forward, reverse, or slow play.
>>
>> They have also taken out a second patent entitled "Curriculum Planning and
>> Publishing Method" which covers organising and establishing a curriculum
>> from a library of information, possibly but NOT NECESSARILY stored on a
>> CD-ROM or videodisc. It includes selecting portions of the information
>> contained in the library, organising the information into a lesson for
>> students, and then coding the lesson plan so that it can be selectively
>> played back to students.
This is pretty amazing. The Plato System (CDC and the U of Illinois) was
doing all of this using slides projected through the back of a plasma
panel terminal display (accompanied by Audio played from a 12" floppy and
captions in Russian, French, Chinese... what have you) before 1976. Mind
you, the teacher here was a Cyber computer (and the course designers, like
I was).
Given that kind of ancient prior art, they shouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Now that I think of it, some of what Compton's is trying to patent was
certainly implemented in Plato.
-- Judy Grass, CNRI
