[Taxacom] Is it possible to create easy-to-use, accurate and rapid keys for species identifiation?

[Stephen Thorpe]

My key to the extant species of Homo in the entire cosmos (as far as is known):

1a  Earth .... H. sapiens
1b  not Earth       .... nil

And I'm not even a primate systematist!!! Oops, did I have to pay someone before posting that geographically based key??? :)


________________________________________
From: Robin Leech [releech at telus.net]
Sent: Tuesday, 1 September 2009 11:49 a.m.
To: Stephen Thorpe; Dean Pentcheff; Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Is it possible to create easy-to-use, accurate and       rapid keys for species identifiation?

Nothing new to having geographical locations in a key.
Couplet 1 reads:
1a.  California north to southern Oregon........................2
1b.  British Columbia south to northern Washington......4

Usually, however, for spiders, there may be anatomical features given first,
then
the geographic distribution is given for back up or confirmation.

I believe that if someone made a key to the pigeon family, that the dodo
would have had an exclusive geographic location.

Robin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Thorpe" <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz>
To: "Dean Pentcheff" <pentcheff at gmail.com>; <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Is it possible to create easy-to-use, accurate and
rapid keys for species identifiation?


I'm darn sure that keys have been using geographical location for as long as
there have been keys! I doub't if anyone even thought to patent the idea!
But then, nobody has probably thought to patent the wheel either. Bye for
now (I'm just off down to the local patent office!!!) ...

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Dean Pentcheff
[pentcheff at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 1 September 2009 11:23 a.m.
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Is it possible to create easy-to-use,    accurate and
rapid keys for species identifiation?

I am fascinated by this posting.

The claim appears to be that using geographic location to aid
identification in an interactive key (if used on a mobile station) is
now patented.

Does anyone know what the implications of this claim are? I don't know
enough about the EU intellectual property regime to even begin to
evaluate what this means.

If, in fact, EU patent regimes consider using an organism's range to
help identify a specimen as sufficiently non-obvious that the idea
deserves patent protection, I'm appalled.

-Dean
--
Dean Pentcheff
pentcheff at gmail.com

2009/8/31 Mauri Åhlberg <mauri.ahlberg at helsinki.fi>:
> I read with great interest Steve Marshall's and John Grehan's messages
> about difficulties of using keys, even interactive keys.
>
> NatureGate Online service for species identification is designed to be
> easy-to-use, accurate and rapid. It is based on patented system and
> method for object idenfification (Lehmuskallio, E. & Lehmuskallio, J.
> 2008, http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=FI2008000039 )
>
> NatureGate is looking for partners to expand this system to new
> organisn species and new regions: http://www.naturegate.net
>
> * IUCN: http://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cec/?2614/
>  * The Finnish Institute of Environment (SYKE), and Ministry of
> Environment:
>       http://www.ymparisto.fi/default.asp?contentid=298951&lan=EN
> * Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG):
>
> http://www.tdwg.org/biodiv-projects/projects-database/view-project/1550/
>
> http://www.tdwg.org/biodiv-networks/networks-database/view-project/56/
> •       Poster at the e-Biosphere 09 conference, June 1 – 3, 2009, London,
> UK. In the category: New Tools, Services and Standards for Data
> Management and Access, http://www.e-biosphere09.org/posters/D1.pdf
>
> Mauri Åhlberg (in English: Ahlberg) FLS
> Professor of Biology and Sustainability Education
> http://www.helsinki.fi/people/mauri.ahlberg
> http://www.naturegate.net
>
>
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