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Patent on Online Testing to be Re-examined
On May 19, 2006 by Jamie Madigan
Here's kind of an interesting story. A while back a company called Test.com (a.k.a., "Test Central Inc.") filed a patent on online testing. The patent was so worded that it gave them the ability to shake down educational testers who offered tests over the internet, and could have been used against the users of online employment testers. In other words, "the extremely broad patent claims to cover almost all methods of online testing." I wrote about the patent last year on my other blog.
Apparently an organization known as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lobbied to have the patent re-examined due to its, you know, absurdity. Says the article:
EFF filed the reexamination request because the extremely broad patent claims to cover almost all methods of online testing. Test.com has used this patent to demand payments from universities with distance education programs that give tests online. But EFF, in conjunction with Theodore C. McCullough of the Lemaire Patent Law Firm, showed that Test.com was not the first to come up with this testing method -- IntraLearn Software Corporation had been marketing an online test-taking system long before Test.com filed its patent request.
Pretty cool. Nothing has been revoked yet, though The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has supposedly revoked abour 7-% of the patents it takes the time to re-examine.a
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