Imagine this: Internet Testing!
What an incredible idea! Imagine someday, you'll be able to design, post and take tests over the internet! No more pencils, no more mimeos, no more stacks of papers to grade... Won't it be great when someone thinks of it?
Oh, wait.. someone did. What incredible thinkers those fellows over at Test Central, Inc. are. They've invented and been awarded a US patent for
... a method of making a test and posting the test online for potential test-takers including providing a host system and a plurality of remote terminals coupled to the Internet, inputting questions at one of the remote terminals, compiling the questions at the host system to make a compiled test, posting the test online for potential test-takers, wherein a test-taker is required to pay to take the compiled test, and wherein the test-maker and the proprietor of the host system share the revenues generated by the test-taker taking the test."
It's amazing that no one's thought of this before now. Amazing how a Google search reveals no evidence that anyone has been making a business out of delivering tests on the internet. Amazing how the incompetents at the US Patent and Trademark Office let this one pass.
The company I work for has a division called Certification.net*, which has been offering hosted online testing and certification for such companies as Cisco, 3Com, Autodesk and Hewlett-Packard since 1996. Prometric has been offering testing since 1990. Back in 1987 when I was teaching High School in New York City, we had a system in the school called PLATO, which offered online learning and testing. That system was first developed in 1963, when the developers of Test.com were most likely still riding their bicycles to school.
Unfortunately, as one attorney quoted in this article reminds us: "Under U.S. Patent law … any challenger must beat the burden of clear and convincing evidence to overturn a patent’s validity." It would be so much easier to just pony up the license fees, wouldn't it?
*I take no responsibility for the design and accessibility of this page, nor for the requirement that you register even to view the "about" page!
Comments
Dig those browser download buttons on certification.net! I would put that at a 1997 vintage? Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I thought there was something called prior art? Hey, I've a patent idea; "...a method for updating journal-like entries onto an internet (or intranet) 'site' through an internet browser based interface. Software that facilitates this will be written in a number of progamming languages and may be installed by the user themselves or on other 'host' computer systems..." Um, where do i go to collect my 17 million dollars?
Posted by: guy dickinson | February 9, 2003 10:04 AM
It's almost not funny... As close as I can figure it, discovery of "Prior Art" is a responsibility of the applicant(!) The patent examiner does a search through the patent database, but doesn't necessarily look for similar "inventions" already extant. So, get yourself a patent attorney, man... then you can start sending out those extortion -- er... "licensing request" -- letters.
Posted by: evan | February 10, 2003 03:13 PM