EFF spells out patent law in linguist dispute
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has accused British publishing house Hodder & Stoughton of making “spurious” claims of patent infringement against a linguist in a letter sent to him on Monday, July 2.
The EFF is working on behalf of NGO worker Mihalis Eleftheriou, who also teaches languages. Through his Language Transfer project, Eleftheriou provides free online courses to people seeking to learn a new language by uploading audio files to platforms such as Soundcloud and YouTube.
In June, Hodder sent a letter to Eleftheriou saying his Language Transfer audio courses infringe US patent number 6,565,358, which was granted to Michel Thomas in 2003.
The ‘358 patent covers a recorded language teaching system, which the EFF claimed is really “an ordinary cassette tape with a recording of a language lesson”. Thomas obtained “a patent for putting a language lesson on tape”, the EFF argued.
Thomas was a linguist who became famous for teaching Hollywood stars how to speak a foreign language, according to the Michel Thomas website, and Hodder claimed to be an exclusive licensee of Thomas’s publishing rights.
The publishing house demanded that Eleftheriou stopped making his courses available in the US and also told him to “abandon plans to publish a book about language teaching”, the EFF said.
In its response to Hodder, the EFF claimed that “your demands have no basis in law and my client will not comply”.
The EFF said the ‘358 patent is invalid, as “an abstract idea does not become eligible for patent protection merely by being implemented on generic or conventional technology”. In addition, “invalidating prior art can easily be found” for the ‘358 patent, the letter claimed.
If Hodder files its “spurious” infringement complaint against Eleftheriou, the EFF warned that it will respond with a motion to find that claims of the ‘358 patent are ineligible.
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