Request for boycott: Hodder & Stoughton books

[squirrelitude]

[public post]

Today I received a message from Mihalis, the fellow who runs the free language course I've been using to learn Spanish (Language Transfer), saying that he has received a cease & desist letter from UK publisher Hodder & Staughton. They're attempting to get him to stop making his courses available in the US (he's in Spain) and stop writing his guide to making language education courses, because it apparently violates their US patent.

What do they claim to have patented? Audio courses in which a question is asked, the student pauses it to answer, a different student on the tape answers, and then the teacher gives feedback. That's... that's apparently their patent. Clearly, something that took great R&D investment that they need a 20 year monopoly to recover. /s

• Facebook post (also copied below, under cut)
• Brief description, and video, on Patreon (have not watched video)

I would like to request that if you're planning on buying a book any time soon, you avoid buying it from Hodder & Staughton, or any of their imprints:

• Coronet Books
• Hodder Faith
• Hodder Moa Beckett (New Zealand)[4]
• Hodder & Stoughton
• John Murray
• Mulholland
• Quercus
• Sceptre
• Saltyard
• Two Roads
• Yellow Kite

I'll also be contacting them to express my displeasure, declaring my boycott and requesting that they rein in their lawyers. The most promising email I've found so far is publicityenquiries@hodder.co.uk on their contact page and various personal emails from their press page, but I may be able to get a better one later. Their email format seems to be firstname.lastname@hodder.co.uk; their CEO Jamie Hodder-Williams seems to be at <jamie.hodder-williams@hodder.co.uk>. (Oh, also: Hodder & Staughton is in turn owned by Hachette Book Group, which is one of the five major English-language publishers. I don't know if it's worth extending the boycott to them.)

Mihalis is a generous and giving person who pours his heart into his work, and runs Language Transfer as a shoestring operation; his mission is to get people more connected across languages and cultures. His courses are wonderful, and he doesn't need some international bully with an asinine patent distracting him from his work.

(Please feel free to share this post, as with any of my public posts.)

Facbeook post follows, under cut:

Hodder Books (Hodder & Staughton) want me to cease the availability of all my free and beautiful material in the US.

I've pasted the letter below, but I wonder how they can expect to patent someone having a conversation with pauses. That is not a methodology, what you understand and how you explain it forms the basis of the methodology. LT courses are wildly unique, and exactly how and why will be explored in the Thinking Method publication they are so concerned about. (Not that, in my opinion, it makes a blind bit of logical, social or legal sense to 'patent' things anyway).
It seems like an intimidation attempt to shut down projects like LT which make quality material for free but still constitute competition.
(I go through it in the video but...)

--------
"Dear Mr.Eleftheriou:
June 19, 2018
CHRISTOPHER P. FOLEY
571.203.2720 christopher.foley@finnegan.com
VIA EMAIL
We represent Hodder & Stoughton Limited (“H&S”), the exclusive licensee of the worldwide publishing rights in the Michel Thomas works and methodology under license from the copyright owners, the heirs of Michel Thomas, who own U.S. Patent No. 6,565,358, for a language teaching system. Our client is concerned that audio courses provided by Language Transfer infringe this United States patent.
H&S have published the works of Michel Thomas for 18 years and have developed new courses using the methodology with new writers. H&S have a responsibility to protect the works and methodology of Michel Thomas on behalf of both the heirs of Michel Thomas and the new writers who have produced courses using the methodology.
We enclose a copy of U.S. Patent No. 6,565,358 (“the MT patent”) and provide the following overview.
The MT patent is infringed by an audio course characterized by a series of expression segments designed to teach a student a target language that is different from the student’s home language. The first segment contains a first expression in the home language of the target student, such as English. There is a pause in the audio constituting a second segment to provide the student with time to stop the audio and translate the first expression to another language, such as Spanish. The second segment is followed by a third segment containing a translation of the first expression by a student other than the target student, and, therefore, it may contain errors. A fourth expression contains a translation of the first expression by a teacher skilled in the target language. Accordingly, in this teaching technique, there is a time span in the second segment where the student can translate the given expression and that time span is controlled by the student.
The MT patent is infringed by any recorded medium in which a student can pause the recording, be it on television systems, tapes, CDs or personal computing systems, having memory for storing a recorded expression that can be played on screen or through an audio player or mobile device. For example, the patent covers monitors that can store and play recorded segments to an individual or classroom audience (i.e. through a website). Therefore, we believe use of the MT patented technique through the Language Transfer website which is for sale in for sale and hosted in the United States infringes this patent.
Our clients are also concerned that the proposed publication of “The Thinking Method Course Writing Guide” will cause others to unwittingly infringe the MT patent.
We therefore require that you (i) cease the availability of all infringing audio courses in the United States and (ii) cease the creation and publication of “The Thinking Method Course Writing Guide” in any format.
We believe it would benefit both the licensee and your company to resolve this matter in a prompt and amicable way and avoid unnecessary costs. We look forward to hearing your response within two weeks of the date of this letter. Please contact me in the meantime if you need further background information."

https://youtu.be/werHDuTOz2Y