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I’d love to see a charity formed for the sole purpose of challenging these patents in courts. Crowdfunding can go a long way, and strategic legal wins can go a long way in shaping precedence. Many organizations dabble in these challenges, but it needs a singular purpose.
It's not the sole purpose but EFF does do a lot in this area: https://www.eff.org/patent-busting
With that said, at a quick glance it doesn't appear that it claims a novel electronic flashcard method, but there could be something I missed.
What does this mean for apps like Anki (assuming they’re not the ones who own this patent)?
https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/licensing-and-copyrighting...
I can't see this patent holding up unless it's for a very specific flashcard system. There is prior art on flashcards going back to the 19th century.
At this point we should just disband the patent office. Does it even serve a purpose in modern times? China, where most of our goods come from has no respect for the American patent system.
How brain dead or just checked out are patent office clerks that patents like this are granted.
I'd imagine there's an art to making the application wordy and confusing enough to slip through.
The whole premise of the patent process it that you disclose your invention for the good of the population and in return you are granted a temporary monopoly over your invention.
I would never, ever, reference a software patent in order to implement a patented invention. They do not serve as any usable guide for the so called "invention." Therefore they are a perversion of the patent process and should not be granted.
What is the recourse here? Would it be reasonable to contact the person that approved the patent with information showing that plenty flashcard systems precede this patent? I imagine there is some more formal system.
If you want to make a flashcard program, pray to gods Google will take pity on you and not enforce their patent. Otherwise, you better had set aside a couple of million dollars for the patent fight with Google. I mean, the patent will eventually get invalidated, but not before a decade in courts and millions of dollars in costs.
EDIT: Ignore everything I said. I got confused. I apologize. I am not going to change the original comment so the context of the replies would be preserved.