Patents to be Auctioned

[Dudley Mills]

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Grazie Ignazio,

> Any (semi)automatic tool for annotation does the same, some of them 

> actually produce RDF data, some others predate RDF and store the 

> semantically rich stuff in other formats. One buzzword you can use to 

> find many of these is Named Entity Recognition. Google for it, you'll 

> get tons of results.

Patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7289956.html, one of many,

highlights the problem with Named Entity Recognition: our computers

still can not process natural language with sufficient precision.

We still need to feed them data using narrowly defined languages

like XML on which the language of the Semantic Web is built.

This may remain the case for decades because context is very important

in natural language processing and context is generally not completely

obvious when scanning a web page.

> A patent over some very simple and/or very old idea is not a

> useful service.

The best patents are over the simplest most commonly and most frequently

used inventions. A common example being spreadable refrigerated butter.

A patent over an old (not novel) idea is not worth anything.

 

[Dudley Mills.vcf]

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---

[Renato Golin-2]

On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 17:54 +0000, Ignazio Palmisano wrote:
> Oh, also a nice quote from a famous capitalist, who would be Henry Ford:
> “Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly.
> It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.”

Hi Ignazio,

That's a great quote, I kinda have this as my motto too. It's funny to
see that from Henry Ford, though... shows that even in hard capitalism
things can be softer than most people use to think.

cheers,
--renato

[Renato Golin-2]

On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 15:37 -0800, virgo091085 wrote:
>
> I am at a Senior at Xavier University.

Is this something to do with X-Men?

Sorry, I couldn't resist... ;)

--renato

[virgo091085]

lol The university was named after Jesuit Missionary, Saint Francis Xavier. But in the Computer Science
department we called our server "cerebro" which is in honor of X-Men.

Renato Golin-2 wrote:

On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 15:37 -0800, virgo091085 wrote:
>
> I am at a Senior at Xavier University.

Is this something to do with X-Men?

Sorry, I couldn't resist... ;)

--renato

[Hugh Glaser]

On 19/1/08 23:37, "virgo091085" <virgo091085@...> wrote:

>
> I am at a Senior at Xavier University.
>
> I am working on creating a web site that will be well-designed and helpful
> to students for searching
> through classes available for next semester in creating their schedules.
>
> I have read a few articles on the semantic web, and I thought it would be
> cool the idea of searches that can
> return results based on more than just keywords but also through the
> understanding of terms with defined meaning. For example, find "theology"
> classes that "Start" in the "afternoon", or find "English" "honor" classes.
>
> General question I have for experts on this forum is would the things that
> are involved with the Semantic Web like RDF language be helpful to my
> project?

Good question.
It should do.
>
> What things would you recommend to look into to create this project?

One way to view this is that you will need a Data/Knowledge Base to keep the
information you gather.
You might have chosen SQL, but instead you are thinking of using this
exciting new technology of RDF and triplestores.
To do this, you will need a triplestore implementation; you can find out
about these at
http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebTools#head-805c63479c854babe4657d5184de60
5910f6d3e2
along with other stuff on implementation.
To make it simple, you can just think of what you are doing as replacing the
querying of an SQL DB using SQL by the querying of an RDF store (the
triplestore) using SPARQL (the query language), see for example
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-rdf-sparql-query-20041012/

So you want to choose yourself a suitable triplestore; for example, if you
are a Java user, you might want to pick Jena, from
http://jena.sourceforge.net/ where you will find quite a lot of tutorial
material as well.

The other thing you will want is an ontology, which roughly corresponds to a
schema in your DB. This will probably be written in a cousin of RDF, the Web
Ontology Language (OWL). The best thing to do is find one that exists
already. For your subject, some others here may be able to suggest a
suitable ontology. An obvious choice is the Learning Objects Model (LOM) at
http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12 .
I have to say that we found it not really right for a similar activity to
yours; it seemed to be primarily concerned with computer-aided learning and
teaching. So we did what you are not meant to do, and used a new one; you
can find it at http://resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ontology/courseware.owl if you
like. You can view the semantics of courses using this at
http://resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/courseware/ . You will not be able to edit
them, but there is an editor that you can have if that helps.

Possibly what you will want to do is use the de facto standard RDF and
ontology editor, Protégé, to develop and edit your material:
http://protege.stanford.edu/

And that is it, as far as your question is concerned.

But to be a good citizen of the Semantic Web, you have not really finished
yet.
What you need to do is make sure that others can access your hard-won
knowledge in a convenient way. To do this, you need to make the SPARQL
endpoint available to the web. You also need to conform to the modern linked
data conventions.
You can find out all about this at http://esw.w3.org/topic/LinkedData

Good luck!
Hugh

PS If you have some RDF that you want published as linked data, with a
public SPARQL endpoint that you can access, if you send it to me there is a
good chance I can just bring it up at http://rkbexplorer.com/ as a new
sub-domain.
--
Hugh Glaser,  Reader
              Dependable Systems & Software Engineering
              School of Electronics and Computer Science,
              University of Southampton,
              Southampton SO17 1BJ
Work: [phone], Fax: [phone]
Mobile: [phone], Home: [phone]
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~hg/

"If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it, and
do not put it into practice, then the theory, however good, is of no
significance."

["~:'' ありがとうございました"]

Who's going to do the data inputting?
ie does the college already have a db with the info.
foaf ie social aspects, who else is doing what
local events, extra curricular etc

regards

Jonathan Chetwynd
Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet



On 19 Jan 2008, at 23:37, virgo091085 wrote:



I am at a Senior at Xavier University.

I am working on creating a web site that will be well-designed and  
helpful
to students for searching
through classes available for next semester in creating their schedules.

I have read a few articles on the semantic web, and I thought it  
would be
cool the idea of searches that can
return results based on more than just keywords but also through the
understanding of terms with defined meaning. For example, find  
"theology"
classes that "Start" in the "afternoon", or find "English" "honor"  
classes.

General question I have for experts on this forum is would the things  
that
are involved with the Semantic Web like RDF language be helpful to my
project?

What things would you recommend to look into to create this project?
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Patents-to-be- 
Auctioned-tp14959172p14976630.html
Sent from the w3.org - semantic-web mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Renato Golin-2]

On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 10:31 -0800, virgo091085 wrote:
> lol The university was named after Jesuit Missionary, Saint Francis Xavier.
> But in the Computer Science
> department we called our server "cerebro" which is in honor of X-Men.

And you call that old hairy teacher "Wolverine", I presume. ;)

About your project, Hugh tips are quite good, I second that.

If your intentions are a bit bigger than a simple project (something
like proof of concept) I'd advise you to think parallel from beginning.
I don't know how Jena would scale in multiple machines but using
libraries like openRDF.org might help you better.

Good luck!
--renato

[Dudley Mills]

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Andrea,

I hope it might be helpful to you to read a little about what patents

are. I would hope that your work with BOOTStrep might give rise to

important Intellectual Property which demonstrates its value by being

commercially exploitable. Links:

http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/what_index.shtml

http://www.epo.org/patents/Grant-procedure/About-patents.html

>> I anticipated the extraction of contact, classification and  

>> geographic semantic data from web pages and its incorporation in  

>> searchable databases.

>

> Can a patent cover something like this ?

> a "database" is almost "searchable" by definition. For the rest, what  

> does it mean ? That I if I make a script that fetch and store  

> geografic information from web pages, this is illegal ? No matter  

> that I made it even without ever by far having heard if the patent,  

> or any tools developed on it ?

> I guess your patent covers some specific technology, algorithm, or  

> software...

Pantents not only can cover that sort of thing but my patents have

been granted and do cover it. Novel combinations form an important

aspect of patentability.

As Renato (I think) said, I may have not been the first to think

of this technology but a diligent search has failed to reveal

any documentary or other physical evidence of such thought before I

filed my patent application (1999/Feb/21), and thus, at least,

I was the first to document, by means of a patent, the

technique.

Extracting and storing geographic location information would

infringe (be illegal) my patents in the jurisdiction in which the

patents are in force, which is the USA only. You do not need to

know of the patents to infringe them. Usually non-commercial

infringement is ignored, however, the person who supplied

tools to allow to infringement can be considered a contributary

infringer in some jurisdictions.

>> I agree that the concept of semantic data is very old and I feel it  

>> is well past the time that the concept should have had substantial  

>> commercial importance on the internet.

> Yes, but commercial value comes with real value. You what are you  

> bringing to the people ? If it is something they already have, looks  

> more like you are taking away something.

In the end the marketplace decides what is valuable. I know of no

commercially significant application currently in use. I’d like

to be shown to be wrong on that. The value of the patents at the

moment is prospective; to provide protection to the investment

that would be made.

>> Fair criticism if I had the fire that you espouse but I am  

>> retired. If Google or Microsoft want the patents, I’d consider  

>> those to be good homes.

>

> I would be curious to know which would be the bad ones.

The simplistic answer is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

The more sophisticated answer is that there are shades of troll

and that trolls have a useful function in the Intellectual Property

“ecology”.

>> Years ago I asked W3C if they had any use for the patents (donated  

>> free). They suggested I setup (yet) another working group. If free  

>> does not do the job, I’ll try not-free.

>

> I have the feeling that the only one one could make money with these  

> kind of patents is sue other people unaware of them

The patents have been on public record since being granted. No need

for anyone to be surprised.

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

 

[Dudley Mills.vcf]

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---

[Noah Slater-3]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 09:45:34AM +1100, Dudley Mills wrote:
> trolls have a useful function in the Intellectual Property "ecology".

There is no such thing. [1]

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

--
Noah Slater <http://bytesexual.org/>

"Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as
society is free to use the results." - R. Stallman

[virgo091085]

I am waiting to hear from my professor about what access I will be allow to the university's registration
database of the information I need.

FOAF are you suggesting that to me as something to add to my site? I could see how that would be interesting but my problem now is trying to create a project that can be relatively completed within
a semester.

So I am trying to just focus on an easy-to-use, intelligent search for looking up classes and a "current
schedule" display so students can see how their various classes fit together.

Thanks for the reply.

"~:'' ありがとうございました。" wrote:

Who's going to do the data inputting?
ie does the college already have a db with the info.
foaf ie social aspects, who else is doing what
local events, extra curricular etc

regards

Jonathan Chetwynd
Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet



On 19 Jan 2008, at 23:37, virgo091085 wrote:



I am at a Senior at Xavier University.

I am working on creating a web site that will be well-designed and  
helpful
to students for searching
through classes available for next semester in creating their schedules.

I have read a few articles on the semantic web, and I thought it  
would be
cool the idea of searches that can
return results based on more than just keywords but also through the
understanding of terms with defined meaning. For example, find  
"theology"
classes that "Start" in the "afternoon", or find "English" "honor"  
classes.

General question I have for experts on this forum is would the things  
that
are involved with the Semantic Web like RDF language be helpful to my
project?

What things would you recommend to look into to create this project?
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Patents-to-be- 
Auctioned-tp14959172p14976630.html
Sent from the w3.org - semantic-web mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Andrea Splendiani-4]

Il giorno 21/gen/08, alle ore 23:45, Dudley Mills ha scritto:

Andrea,

I hope it might be helpful to you to read a little about what patents

are.

I know what they are. For software though, the thing is highly debatable.

 I would hope that your work with BOOTStrep might give rise to

important Intellectual Property which demonstrates its value by being

commercially exploitable. Links:

I'm not the responsible of this project, and it's not up to me to decide this. But indeed lot of the people in research seems to be inclined to give things for free than to patent them.

As for me, if I'm paid on public money I think it's good to leave the results for the public. There are exception to this. But the bottomline is always what to you bringing to the people.

I mean... talking about money. How much money did you "invest" in your "new invention" ? Did you spent "all that money" only because you had the garantee that the result was yours ? Was it necessary to spend "all that money" for it to happen ? (of course, patent fees don't matter).

For the rest, I cannot really answer because I have to check whether I'm going to infringe some patents somebody claimed on the use of a verb to link a subject to an object.

A.

[virgo091085]

First off, thank you very much for your detailed reply. You have given me a lot to think about.

My main problem at the moment is trying to figure out how to scale down my project so that
it can be relatively completed within a semester (from now to end of April). (to repeat myself from
another post)-So I am trying to just focus on an easy-to-use, intelligent search for looking up classes
and a "current schedule" display so students can see how their various classes fit together as they
go along.

Hugh Glaser wrote:

> What things would you recommend to look into to create this project?

One way to view this is that you will need a Data/Knowledge Base to keep the
information you gather.
You might have chosen SQL, but instead you are thinking of using this
exciting new technology of RDF and triplestores.
To do this, you will need a triplestore implementation; you can find out
about these at
http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebTools#head-805c63479c854babe4657d5184de60
5910f6d3e2
along with other stuff on implementation.
To make it simple, you can just think of what you are doing as replacing the
querying of an SQL DB using SQL by the querying of an RDF store (the
triplestore) using SPARQL (the query language), see for example
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-rdf-sparql-query-20041012/

---I think my professor/mentor's hopes is that I could somehow use the university's database
of class information. Although he has warn me that it might not be in the most suitable format.
So perhaps if I have to work on reorganizing the database anyway, I could change it into an RDF
store? I am afraid that I might be still confusing the meaning of these new terms, so bear with me.
Which I might do Jena?

Hugh Glaser wrote:

The other thing you will want is an ontology, which roughly corresponds to a
schema in your DB. This will probably be written in a cousin of RDF, the Web
Ontology Language (OWL). The best thing to do is find one that exists
already. For your subject, some others here may be able to suggest a
suitable ontology. An obvious choice is the Learning Objects Model (LOM) at
http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12 .
I have to say that we found it not really right for a similar activity to
yours; it seemed to be primarily concerned with computer-aided learning and
teaching. So we did what you are not meant to do, and used a new one; you
can find it at http://resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ontology/courseware.owl if you
like. You can view the semantics of courses using this at
http://resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/courseware/ . You will not be able to edit
them, but there is an editor that you can have if that helps.

But to be a good citizen of the Semantic Web, you have not really finished
yet.
What you need to do is make sure that others can access your hard-won
knowledge in a convenient way. To do this, you need to make the SPARQL
endpoint available to the web. You also need to conform to the modern linked
data conventions.
You can find out all about this at http://esw.w3.org/topic/LinkedData


# A global naming scheme (URIs);
# A standard syntax for describing data (RDF);
# A standard means of describing the properties of that data (rdf-schema);
# A standard means of describing relationships between data items (ontologies);

so that is an easy break-down of semantic web ideas that I found on HP's site. If I took the time
creating these

(would all be needed -- I am wondering if there is any hybrid approach between regular site design and database storage to the new semantic web ideas, my professor keeps
suggesting tagging the data on the unviersity's database to create defined terms to search for...)

with Jena (and other tools?) -does it make sense that I could integrate this into
a more intelligent/efficient search? Right now I am overwhelmed trying to figure out how to create
an implementation project and present an interesting area of research for my weekly senior seminars.

So any other information, links, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for all the information you gave to consider.

Lora

[Niklas Lindström]

Hi Lora!

I also agree, Hugh provided very good advice. (But the link to the
SPARQL spec was old, use: http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/  ;)
).

Regarding ontologies, I recently noticed work on a university ontology
by Patrick Gosetti-Murrayjohn, which also focuses on course
descriptions. See:

    http://www.patrickgmj.net/blog/moving-toward-a-university-ontology

for details.

Best regards,
Niklas


On Jan 26, 2008 10:32 PM, virgo091085 <virgo091085@...> wrote:

>
> First off, thank you very much for your detailed reply. You have given me a
> lot to think about.
>
> My main problem at the moment is trying to figure out how to scale down my
> project so that
> it can be relatively completed within a semester (from now to end of April).
> (to repeat myself from
> another post)-So I am trying to just focus on an easy-to-use, intelligent
> search for looking up classes
> and a "current schedule" display so students can see how their various
> classes fit together as they
> go along.
>
>
>
> Hugh Glaser wrote:
> >
> >
> >> What things would you recommend to look into to create this project?
> >
> > One way to view this is that you will need a Data/Knowledge Base to keep
> > the
> > information you gather.
> > You might have chosen SQL, but instead you are thinking of using this
> > exciting new technology of RDF and triplestores.
> > To do this, you will need a triplestore implementation; you can find out
> > about these at
> > http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebTools#head-805c63479c854babe4657d5184de60
> > 5910f6d3e2
> > along with other stuff on implementation.
> > To make it simple, you can just think of what you are doing as replacing
> > the
> > querying of an SQL DB using SQL by the querying of an RDF store (the
> > triplestore) using SPARQL (the query language), see for example
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-rdf-sparql-query-20041012/
> >
>
> ---I think my professor/mentor's hopes is that I could somehow use the
> university's database
> of class information. Although he has warn me that it might not be in the
> most suitable format.
> So perhaps if I have to work on reorganizing the database anyway, I could
> change it into an RDF
> store? I am afraid that I might be still confusing the meaning of these new
> terms, so bear with me.
> Which I might do Jena?
>
>
>
> Hugh Glaser wrote:
> >
> > The other thing you will want is an ontology, which roughly corresponds to
> > a
> > schema in your DB. This will probably be written in a cousin of RDF, the
> > Web
> > Ontology Language (OWL). The best thing to do is find one that exists
> > already. For your subject, some others here may be able to suggest a
> > suitable ontology. An obvious choice is the Learning Objects Model (LOM)
> > at
> > http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12 .
> > I have to say that we found it not really right for a similar activity to
> > yours; it seemed to be primarily concerned with computer-aided learning
> > and
> > teaching. So we did what you are not meant to do, and used a new one; you
> > can find it at http://resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ontology/courseware.owl if
> > you
> > like. You can view the semantics of courses using this at
> > http://resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/courseware/ . You will not be able to edit
> > them, but there is an editor that you can have if that helps.
> >
>
>
> Hugh Glaser wrote:
> >
> > But to be a good citizen of the Semantic Web, you have not really finished
> > yet.
> > What you need to do is make sure that others can access your hard-won
> > knowledge in a convenient way. To do this, you need to make the SPARQL
> > endpoint available to the web. You also need to conform to the modern
> > linked
> > data conventions.
> > You can find out all about this at http://esw.w3.org/topic/LinkedData
> >
>
> # A global naming scheme (URIs);
> # A standard syntax for describing data (RDF);
> # A standard means of describing the properties of that data (rdf-schema);
> # A standard means of describing relationships between data items
> (ontologies);
>
> so that is an easy break-down of semantic web ideas that I found on HP's
> site. If I took the time
> creating these
>
> (would all be needed -- I am wondering if there is any hybrid approach
> between regular site design and database storage to the new semantic web
> ideas, my professor keeps
> suggesting tagging the data on the unviersity's database to create defined
> terms to search for...)
>
> with Jena (and other tools?) -does it make sense that I could integrate this
> into
> a more intelligent/efficient search? Right now I am overwhelmed trying to
> figure out how to create
> an implementation project and present an interesting area of research for my
> weekly senior seminars.
>
> So any other information, links, or suggestions would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks again for all the information you gave to consider.
>
> Lora
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Patents-to-be-Auctioned-tp14959172p15012039.html
>
> Sent from the w3.org - semantic-web mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
>
>