-------- Original Message -------- Subject: chron of higher ed: patent on online testing Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:36:36 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Dave Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From the issue dated March 26, 2004
<http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i29/29a03101.htm>
## Company Claims to Own Online Testing
A patent holder demands fees from colleges that use a common tool of distance education
### By DAN CARNEVALE
When Regis University put some of its courses online in the 1990s, officials there figured that it was a no-brainer to administer tests online as well. And so they did.
Last fall, however, they received a threatening letter from Test Central Inc., which holds a patent on various types of online testing. The company claims that Regis and other colleges may be infringing on that patent and, if so, must pay thousands of dollars to continue offering tests online.
Ellen K. Waterman, director of distance learning at the Denver institution, says she was stunned to see that somebody claimed to own the rights to online testing itself. The patent claims made by Test Central are so broad, she says, that they seem to cover any type of testing in cyberspace.
"It's very, very general," she says. "If you can patent anything that people do on the Web, we are not protected at all."
But Test Central officials see things differently. They say that the patent does not necessarily cover all online testing and that they are entitled to be paid fees by any college conducting testing that is covered. And if they suspect a college of infringing on the patent, they may take the college to court.
"There are many organizations out there who have made a ton of money off of the technology that we've got a patent on," says James J. Posch, chief executive officer of Test Central and of its parent company, Test.com. "Our concern is that other people are profiting at our expense."
Some of the colleges that received letters from Test Central, based in Cleveland, have not yet decided how to respond, while others -- as well as companies that also provide online-testing tools to colleges -- plan to fight back.
Test Central's letters went out to an undetermined number of colleges soon after another technology company, Acacia, put colleges and businesses on notice that they might be violating its patent on streaming video technology ( The Chronicle, November 7).
Together, the two companies' claims have led college officials to worry that many more companies could make their own claims to ownership of Internet processes. Such claims, the educators say, could threaten the viability of distance-education programs.
"This is like Pandora's box has opened," says Sally Johnstone, executive director of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, or WICHE. "Everybody thinks they can get a piece of the action because they had an idea at one time."
[...]
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph Lorenzo Hall, SIMS PhD Student; UC Berkeley. [web:<http://pobox.com/~joehall/>, blog:<http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb>]
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