Blackboard Patents the VLE then sues Direct2Learn

[Geoff]

The USPTO has granted Blackboard a patent on anything to do with VLE's.

Story covered by e-Literate
Blackboard Press Release
The Patent

There's also a thread on the Moodle forums here.

The story doesn't end there though. Blackboard then turned round and sued one of it's competitions over Patent infringement.

PDF of court docket

Educators are currently amassing evidence of prior art in this wikipedia entry.

[Ric_]

That patent looks ridiculous... basically any system that has different levels of user access for students, teachers and admins plus areas for content and uploading files is covered. It even goes into depth about having a login!

It really is ridiculous and it is most surprising that it does not contravene anti-competition laws.

[webman]

Hehe, hope they sue MS over SharePoint :lol

But software patents are a bad, BAADDD idea

[Espada]

That patent looks ridiculous... basically any system that has different levels of user access for students, teachers and admins plus areas for content and uploading files is covered. It even goes into depth about having a login!

It really is ridiculous and it is most surprising that it does not contravene anti-competition laws.

Great that includes our network drives!

[NetworkGeezer]

Hehe, hope they sue MS over SharePoint :lol

But software patents are a bad, BAADDD idea

A while back some people speculated that SCO sued IBM over Linux just so they could be bought out.

We maybe looking at a nightmare scenario where M$ buys Blackboard with some money it finds down the back of the sofa and then they would then own the patent :evil3: . World domination would be complete :evil5:

[wesleyw]

How much does Blackboard cost?

Wes

[Geoff]

There's a summary of the ongoing Blackboard patent situation in LWN by Pamela Jones (of Groklaw fame).

http://lwn.net/Articles/197535/

Worth taking 5mins to read it.

[russdev]

two interesting things on this from ALT when they had conference calls with both parties

http://www.alt.ac.uk/docs/ALT_Blackboard_20060823.pdf
http://www.alt.ac.uk/docs/ALT_D2L_20060816.pdf

Russ