{"id":178947,"date":"2018-07-11T18:51:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T23:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/07\/11\/they-got-a-patent-for-what\/"},"modified":"2018-07-11T18:51:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T23:51:00","slug":"they-got-a-patent-for-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/07\/11\/they-got-a-patent-for-what\/","title":{"rendered":"They Got a Patent for What?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Yes, in 2000, some troll secured a patent on the ability to pause a recorded lesson<\/a>, because \u2026\u2026\u2026 computers!!!<\/strike> gross incompetence.<\/div>\n

This is profoundly dysfunctional:<\/p>\n

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped up<\/a> to represent a small, independent online language teacher who has been threatened with a lawsuit by a British publisher that claims the teacher is infringing an American patent issued back in 2000<\/a> for a particular audio-based teaching technique. <\/p>\n

What’s the secret sauce? Amazingly, the use of a pause button to temporarily stop the lesson.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

A Virginia attorney, Christopher Foley<\/a>, representing publisher Hodder & Stoughton, recently demanded<\/a> that Eleftheriou halt any publication of audio lessons in the United States or face a potential lawsuit. <\/p>\n

Hodder & Stoughton claims to represent the “exclusive licensee” of a patent originally granted to a now-deceased<\/a> French teacher, Michel Thomas<\/a>. The Polish immigrant, who lived for decades in the United States, claimed that he could teach anyone the basics of a European language that had commonalities with English to anyone in “a matter of days or a week.” He attracted numerous celebrity clients, including Woody Allen and Bill Murray. <\/p>\n

Eleftheriou said that he was not “reproducing” Thomas’ method, adding that “nothing else [is] as well thought-out” as Eleftheriou’s own technique. <\/p>\n

But however effective Thomas’ teaching technique may or may not have been, it was not patentable, according to a scathing letter<\/a> sent on July 2, 2018 by Daniel Nazer<\/a>, an EFF attorney who is representing Eleftheriou.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seriously, whoever approved this patent should be fired.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t even a pre Alice<\/i> software patent.  This was just completely negligent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, in 2000, some troll secured a patent on the ability to pause a recorded lesson, because \u2026\u2026\u2026 computers!!! gross incompetence. This is profoundly dysfunctional: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped up to represent a small, independent online language teacher who has been threatened with a lawsuit by a British publisher that claims the teacher …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[588,428,429],"class_list":["post-178947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-fail","tag-ip","tag-patent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}