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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:
( Text of Facebook post )
