Re: UML-OWL Generator, A product to convert UML into OWL

One more point on ICOM -- we actually saw Enrico's tool at the first 
ISWC at Stanford in 2001, but only well after we had initiated our work 
- we believe he was working essentially in parallel with us.  Where we 
started from a UML tooling base, Enrico started from FaCT and worked the 
other way (at least, that's my recollection).  The supporting work on 
our patent includes material that dates back to 2000 and earlier, and 
came out of research we did on the DARPA/RASSP program in the late 1990s 
in OMT (Jim Rumbaugh's object-oriented modeling methodology that was 
part of what he brought to the UML table).

Thanks,

Elisa

Bijan Parsia wrote:
> Elisa,
>
> Just for my curiosity, I was wondering if you would mind commenting on:
>     http://www.google.com/patents?id=NR6XAAAAEBAJ
> It seems like it would be pretty easy to infringe upon. Particularly 
> claim 3:
> """3. A method for creating an ontology in UML, the method including:
>
> accepting as input an ontology name and one or more ontology elements, 
> each ontology element corresponding to at least one of a term, 
> concept, and relationship between concepts, the ontology elements 
> forming a detailed specification of the ontology;
>
> generating a logically equivalent ontology with UML model elements 
> based on a UML profile grounded in a foundation ontology; and
>
> presenting the resulting ontology to a user in a UML environment."""
>
> That also seems to fall on prior art (at the very least, the second 
> and third parts seem to fall with ICOM).
>
> How does this patent relate to the ODM work? (OMG has a 
> royalty-free/RAND requirement on IP.)
>
> Cheers,
> Bijan.
>
>

Received on Monday, 4 May 2009 16:01:13 UTC