Blackboard Wins Lawsuit Over E-Learning Patent
from the not-how-the-system-was-supposed-to-work dept
Blackboard is a distance learning company that claims to hold patents on the concept of distance learning. It wasted little time in suing competitors even as a close examination of the patent showed that it wasn't just obvious, but there was plenty of prior art on it. A formal challenge to the patent was launched, and the Patent Office agreed to review the patent over a year ago, but has yet to do much on that re-exam. However, while everyone waits for that, the lawsuit went forward, and a jury has decided that the patent is valid and the company Desire2Learn owes Blackboard $3 million (found via Troll Tracker). There will be an appeal of course, and maybe one of these days someone at the Patent Office will realize that it issued a patent on something rather obvious with a ton of prior art.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: e-learning, patents
Companies: blackboard, desire2learn
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Great
EtG
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ITT
So go Blackboard! Way to promote education: sue others into the ground to prevent them from doing it online.
PS, in 2002 I took one of my classes online during the summer at Clark Community College so I wouldn't have to take it in High School. But that's probably not prior art to their patent, or grounds for it being obvious. I mean it's only what just about every school in the Northwest offers due to weather and distance conditions.
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Re: ITT
I mean, if I was to build my own iPhone (I know, I'm reaching here) and infringe the patents of Apple, I can't imagine them even remotely caring that I made my own...as long as it was for my own use and not to be licensed or sold (especially as an "iPhone" - which I guess is a trademark issue).
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Pre-Web Concept
Blackboard is just trying to fight back a disparate case after seeing how free and open sources e-Learning software and other decent commercial companies has developed great systems and are away ahead of blackboard!
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As I understand it
I fail to see how this is patentable.
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we were doing distance learning applications in 19
Was there something that was particular to the case that made something in the technique patentable.
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Sad day indeed...
When I was in college, I was working with the Ed Tech group and we sampled Desire2Learn ... by far a superior product.
They listened to what we wanted, their programmers were adding features all the time. It was faster, smoother, and prettier than Blackboard. It's really a shame.
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So Blackboard is like SCO?
There is no way that having role based access control is patentable - otherwise pretty much everyone in the software industry would be out of business.
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