Patent for education

March 3, 2010 10:45 AM

Can a teacher patent a curriculum if the curriculum concerns very specific niche type of program? A friend is about to go to a company and offer her curriculum as a new program for them, but is concerned that they will run with the idea but not hire her to implement it.
posted by MayNicholas to Education (4 answers total)

This is tricky, because the curriculum itself is probably copyrightable but not necessarily patentable unless there is a very novel, very specific methodology that she developed that has nothing to do with the course material itself.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've been working on curriculum lately and copyright and NDAs are the best defense I've been able to find.
posted by verb at 10:54 AM on March 3, 2010

Response by poster: I know part of her program can be copyrighted because she writes it herself- but the teaching program that surrounds it is specific to what she writes.
posted by MayNicholas at 11:07 AM on March 3, 2010

An example that might be related are the Head First/Head Rush series from O'Reilly. A very innovative approach (methodology) to teaching technical information but there's nothing in the books to indicate that they are patent-pending.
posted by trinity8-director at 12:23 PM on March 3, 2010

Best answer: If she could describe what she's offering as a teaching method, it might be patentable (here's one example of a US granted patent for a teaching method).

35 USC 101 defines the type of thing that's patentable in the US: "...any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof..." [emph. mine]. IANAL, but I do not believe a curriculum alone (as I understand the term, as defined by the linked Wikipedia article) qualifies as any of these.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:21 PM on March 3, 2010