Re: IBM patent for responding to natural disaster

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
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

-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com