NIP Case 2018
In 2016 the leadership of Baltic Sea University in Tallinn decided to streamline its activities in order to meet "the demands of modern society" in a more "efficient and adequate manner". This meant that a number of "peripheral" themes were removed from the list of subjects offered by the university. One of these subjects was "Abstract Art around World War I". Associate Professor Nina Ansip, with a PhD on the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich (1879-1935) was very upset. Luckily, she got a new post at The Thousand Lakes University in Finland, which she found more faithful to true academic ideals.
Ansip started at her new university on 1 August 2016. She was asked to take responsibility for the introductory courses in the Bachelor of Arts Programme. At her time at Baltic Sea University, Ansip had used the digital learning tool "EasyArt" for Students of Contemporary Art. "EasyArt" had been developed and was marketed by the Danish company eLearing A/S. It consisted of reproductions of several masterpieces of the 20th and 21st century, biographies of the artists, analyses of the works, and several tools for interactive learning and possibilities for students to co-operate in doing various assignments. One of the useful features of the program, in Ansip’s opinion, was its ability to automatically identify "common mistakes" made by the students in their writings and discussions online, notify the teacher thereof and guide the students to literature and assignments that could help remedy the misconceptions.
eLearning A/S had patented this part of the system. The broad claim 1 of the European patent, valid in all the Nordic countries, read:
"A computer-implemented learning system comprising means for:
monitoring system data about one or more parts of a digital learning environment, the data being indicative of faults of one or more users of the learning environment;
determining whether the system data for a given part meets one or more defined characteristics, each characteristic being indicative of undesirable behavior associated with that component;
if one of the given requirements is met, determining at least one remedial action associated with that requirement which may be employed to address the undesirable behavior;"