Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: IBM patent for responding to natural disaster
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:03:01 -0700
________________________________________ From: Gavin Treadgold [gt () kestrel co nz] Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 12:43 AM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] IBM patent for responding to natural disaster Hi Dave (and the list if you choose) Where this may become interesting is in the increasing amount of software that is becoming available for disaster/emergency management. I am not yet aware of commercial IBM disaster management (DM) software, but I am aware that Microsoft has been forming relationships to support DM that runs on Microsoft's server platforms (Infopath, Sharepoint etc). There are a number of other commercial vendors such as E-Team and WebEOC as well. However, what is more likely is that these DM patents are defensive only. Any vendor that starts getting aggressive with patents in the humanitarian domain is on a one-way street to a public relations hiding. E.g. in Sri Lanka following the tsunami there were some issues with Microsoft not initially being willing to donate some Windows XP licences on laptops donated by IBM. Apparently they turned up with PC- DOS on them initially... read "relief software politics" [1] and "update on XP licenses for the notebooks" [2]. Suffice to say, Microsoft came around and provided licences before long. IBM is supporting the Sahana Project [3] - an open source web-based disaster management system that was started in Sri Lanka following the tsunami in 2004. Sahana has since seen a number of deployments at disasters internationally, and this has has seen strong support and promotion by IBM's Crisis Response Team to achieve this. We are also likely to see more code contributions from IBM to Sahana from past standalone solutions that they have developed for DM. Where the rubber hits the road though is that for stochastic methods like this to work properly, there is a need to have standards and interoperability between all commercial and open source vendors involved in disaster management so that you can actually represent digitally and aggregate the impacts and needs (the inputs) across all organisations, and start performing your analysis. Otherwise you are acting on less-than-complete information and the results of your analysis are unlikely to be that useful - especially if it is sensitive to the addition of information from say one more organisation that has more information to add. The tool will be useless if it is only able to operate on data from one vendors platform when you may have a multitude of different systems in any geographical area collecting information about the disaster. This standards-based approach has been the motivator behind the development of the W3C Emergency Information Interoperability Framework (EIIF) Incubator Group [4]. Of course the even harder part is to get these organisations to accept the mindset and processes that go with sharing data for analysis in advance, and accepting the recommendations of what will appear to most as a black box process. I also think that the Board of Sahana will be looking to clarify this patent and its implication for Sahana in light of this patent. Regards Gavin Disclaimer - I'm on the Board and Project Management Committee for the Sahana Project, and also a contributor to the W3C EIIF XG. -- Gavin Treadgold - Director gt () kestrel co nz - M +64 21 679 335 Christchurch Office - New Zealand - P +64 3 343 6169 - F +64 3 343 6161 Kestrel Group - Risk and Emergency Management - www.kestrel.co.nz [1] <http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva?id=31> [2] <http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva?id=34> [3] <http://www.sahana.lk/> [4] <http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/eiif/wiki/Main_Page> On 2008-04-05, at 0839, David Farber wrote:
________________________________________ From: Sashikumar N [sashikumar.n () gmail com] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 3:27 PM To: David Farber Subject: IBM patent for responding to natural disaster Dear Prof Dave Coming on the heels of news that IBM is developing stochastic programs to manage natural disasters http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/26605 , people have pointed to actual IBM patent for such thing http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080077463%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080077463&RS=DN/20080077463 . isn't this stretching a bit far for patent? Would some body who does a programming to manage such disasters would violate IBM patent? regards sashi
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