Hi wayne,
Just a explanation of what I meant by unis being in the media business. I think it's pretty obvious that if you're producing/capturing OEResources, you're producing media. Here's an example of what I mean in the OER video space. It's a problem, as Steven points, out that our education systems view OERs as static objects and not flowing streams. That's been the paradigm shift in media which edu institutions haven't been able to come to terms with (a failed English major:).
The big problem that I've seen for the past decade is that OERers, who are progressive disciplinary groups scattered around the world, simply aren't offered some decent open ICT tools and infrastructure (by their National institutions and Networks). E.g. "Let's use Elluminate today. We'll get around to an open version in the future".
There have been many attempts by different parties at writing a credential for global release. Here's one that was attempted by a group who wanted a common diploma for Europe and beyond. NEM has a membership of big broadcasters like the BBC (with who the OUUK has a working relationship). None has gone anywhere because they don't focus on the students and the jobs into which they might fit. One only has to monitor the unemployment rate of grads internationally to see the results of this institutional myopism.
So please keep in mind that OERs, or their lacking, is a not problem. The problem is in the way they are aggregated and disseminated from points in cyberspace. One only has to go through the OCWC members sites to see the profileration of "me too!"
At the moment we're about to start a nice little discussion between some NRENs and some service providers. One of them should give OERers a half-decent replacement for Elluminate. But even then we have the same problem. OERers, and their materials, are scattered around thousands of domains, in different languages.
So please don't dismiss the patent out of hand. If I wanted bucks, I'd be going to Google and saying "here's a way to nail down your Google + "hangouts" in cyberspace. Just give me an alternative to how one can create a directory for OERu's global disciplinary (inter-institutional) group's comms and resources. i.e. media