Appellate Court Overturns Blackboards Patent

I read Appellate Court Overturns Blackboard Patent; Blackboard To Press On by David Nagel
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/07/27/appellate-court-overturn...)
From July 2009

According to the article (at the time it was published) Blackboard and Desire2Learn are in litigation over patent violation issues. Blackboard maintains a patent on learning management system technologies and claims that Desire2Learn has made several infringements on that patent, known as the “Alcorn patent”. Unfortunately, Blackboard lost its appeal on most of the points it was battling with Desire2Learn over.

According to Nagel, “Blackboard is continuing its litigation against Desire2learn on other intellectual property issues involving patents that the company has been granted since the Alcorn patent.”

Blackboard is the developer of the most widely adopted commercial learning management system. In 2006, Blackboard enraged education technology world when it obtained a patent for "technology used for Internet-based education support systems and methods" and then filed a patent-infringement suit against a rival company, Desire2Learn. This removed Blackboard’s management system from the public domain.

Nagel points out that this move provoked, “…the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) a FOSS legal advocacy group, [in November, 2006] to file an ex parte request with the USPTO to reexamine the patent on the basis of its assertion that Blackboard's patent was invalid [because of existing art].” Competitors to Blackboard were worried that should the patent stand, many open source developers would be forced out of the learning management systems market. SFLC request was granted in January, 2007 and the patent was reexamined. Blackboard agreed to allow the open source community to use the software but the patent still stood, and Blackboard continued its lawsuit against Desire2Learn.

The short of it, in February 2008, Blackboard was awarded $3.1 million from Desire2Learn for patent infringement and the patent still stood. Desire2Learn was forced to update and release its software minus the infringements within 60 days. And that brings us to the continued battle as of July, 2009 between Blackboard and Desire2Learn.

Reflection
While I don't fully understand the LMS market, I can sympathize why other developers, such as Moodle, were outraged with Blackboard's patent. Just like any product it helps to have healthy competition. If Blackboard's patent had stood, other companies wouldn't be either forced out of the market or forced to come up with "creative ways" to get around Blackboard's patent.

When developing a course, designers need options. "One size does not fit all." And, although Blackboard offers three levels of support, it still may not be the match a designer is looking for when creating a online course.