Appellate Court Overturns Blackboard Patent; Blackboard To Press On

http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/07/27/Appellate-Court-Overturn...

Blackboard has apparently been fighting a fellow LMS providers Desire2Learn over patent infridgement. They say that Desire is utilizing their intellectual property without compensation in a number of areas. The Court has overturned Blackboards patent claiming that they got the patent based on the passed work of other existing LMS providers such as Moodle. Blackboard insists they are going to continue to fight and have also started a number of other lawsuits with their competitor regarding different paten infringements.

In my opinion, while people should be given their due compensation, the more that companies can piggyback off of others ideas the more the consumer will benefit. If Blackboard holds monopolies in the area of LMS, the cost of using Blackboard will be higher. The best thing for consumers if for various companies to have similar but slightly different ideas so that they can use the LMS that will maximize performance for their company.