Structured Methods

Like other DoD research and development efforts (the Internet and GPS for example), ADL currently plans to transition stewardship of SCORM to the private sector. The ADL Initiative will continue to maintain SCORM 2004 for the US Department of Defense and will continue to engage in research and development efforts for other advanced learning technologies and standards.

Now let's apply the same lens to the Department's business review letters regarding patent policies for the VITA and IEEE standards development organizations (SDOs).(20) The core mission of these SDOs is to establish functional and interoperability standards so that different firms' products will work together. This has the potential to vastly increase efficiency. There is a potential business problem, however, in the form of patent hold up: where firms, after a costly selection process, have committed to a particular standard, a patent that was previously substitutable may become essential, giving the patent owner the ability to hold up the standard and demand a higher rate than would have been the case if it had to compete, before the standard setting, with alternative technologies. To prevent such hold up, VITA and IEEE proposed patent policies, and the Department of Justice issued favorable business review letters to both.(21)

In a recent post, I examined differences among the licenses of four different consortia. By and large, the licenses under which standards development organizations (SDOs) and consortia offer their work are unique to the particular SDO or consortium. Some are similar, but it is hard to find two independent SDOs or consortia using an identical license (can anyone cite examples otherwise?). This diversity of licenses is increasingly problematic as convergence among standards begins to occur and as enterprises look to apply multiple standards to meet cross-industry requirements.

The LETSI Architecture Working Group has decided to take on a small project to see how well we can swim. We picked a relatively small and simple problem, but one that will provide a lot of value once solved. If approved, the Architecture Working Group’s first project will be to define a web services interface for the SCORM run-time API.

Historically, the U.S. court system understood that software could not be patented. Unfortunately, lower courts have radically re-interpreted the laws (through decisions such as State Street), in ways that have greatly harmed software developers and software users. Many people have explained some of the many problems that software patents create, demonstrating that software patents create more problems than they solve. Here are a few URLs that explain why software patents are a terrible idea.

An Open Standard is more than just a specification. The principles behind the standard, and the practice of offering and operating the standard, are what make the standard Open.