A federal appeals court ruled Monday that part of one of Blackboard’s software patents is invalid, reversing a decision that forced Blackboard rival Desire2Learn to pay $3.3-million in damages for infringement. Blackboard will now have to repay those damages, according to a disclosure filing by Blackboard.
In Monday’s action, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit partly overturned a lower court’s ruling that Desire2Learn was violating a Blackboard software patent. Both companies make software that colleges use to provide course materials to students, run online discussions, and track grades.
Since the lower coart ruled, Blackboard has won other, similar patents that are not affected by Monday’s ruling and remain vaild. Matthew Small, Blackboard’s chief business officer, said that he was “obviously disappointed” by the decision and that the company planned to appeal. “They’re infringing at least three of our other patents,” he said of Desire2Learn.
Desire2Learn officials argue that Blackboard’s course-management patents are overly broad and therefore were issued improperly.
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3 Responses to U.S. Appeals Court Rules Against Blackboard in Latest Patent Ruling
weizhang2009 - July 28, 2009 at 10:25 am
The text in this news have some errors, which makes it difficult to read. For instance, “part of one of Blackboard's software patents”, “In Monday's action”, “overturned a lower court's ruling”, etc. I am not sure if I am only one having the problems (in that case, it may be my computer system).
Nonetheless, a typo like “Since the lower coart ruled” can be easily avoided if a careful proofread took place.
srvanhook - July 28, 2009 at 12:41 pm
' is the code for apostrophe — it works in xml but not earlier forms of html. I’ve been having the same problem in IE — no doubt many others are too
vkwchron - July 28, 2009 at 8:16 pm
A report of this story with more specificity can be found at:
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/07/27/daily26.html