August 27, 2008
Patent Office Will Continue Reexamination of Blackboard's Controversial Patent
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a request by Blackboard Inc. for a temporary halt in the office’s review of a software patent the company holds concerning course-management systems.
This year Blackboard won a lawsuit in federal court against a rival software company, Desire2Learn, for violating the patent, though Desire2Learn has appealed the decision. Meanwhile, Desire2Learn had formally challenged the validity of the patent with the patent office, arguing that it is overly broad and covers technology that other companies had developed before Blackboard filed its patent. The patent office issued an initial verdict in March that rejected all 44 of the claims that make up Blackboard’s patent. But that review is “nonfinal,” meaning that the review is still underway.
Blackboard officials filed a request to the patent office in May asking that the review of the patent be put on hold until the patent lawsuit is fully resolved. The patent office denied the request this month.
“You run the risk of having conflicting rulings along the way, so we had asked the patent office to stay the reexamination,” said Matthew Small, Blackboard’s general counsel, when asked why the company made the request. He described the setback as “a small procedural matter.”
Bruce Wieder, a partner with the Washington law firm Dow Lohnes, said he was not surprised by the decision, since the patent reexamination and the lawsuit are both well under way and are sufficiently different. “As my mother used to say, It never hurts to ask,” he quipped. He said final decisions were not expected anytime soon in either proceeding, and that it would likely be years before the patent issue is resolved.
Officials from Desire2Learn touted the ruling on a blog it runs tracking the patent dispute. “We look forward to the next step in the reexamination process,” said the statement. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday August 27, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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I sure do hate those Flash media ads for Adobe here on the Chronicle.com. The flash ads freeze the page. I guess they use annoying, buggy ads to sell annoying, buggy software.
— TB Aug 28, 11:33 AM #
Yeah you really need to ban those damn Flash ads. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to visit your site.
— Spanky Context Aug 28, 11:44 AM #
More to point…Desire2Learn sucks. Badly.
Blackboard is too expensive, but it doesn’t suck as badly.
How sad that I have arrived at the point where I select the one that sucks the least for our institution.
— Landry Tomlinson Aug 28, 11:54 AM #
Moodle, anyone?
— Dave Postles Aug 28, 12:56 PM #
D2L = sucks
Blackboard = expensive
Moodle/Sakai = not really free as you have to pay programmers to customize it
Everything else = old, clunky and stupid
— Jim Aug 28, 02:42 PM #
If Blackboard would just drive a stake through heart of the current version of webCT, I’d forgive a LOT. I can’t find a single faculty member who likes it…and I agree.
— Al Aug 28, 04:27 PM #
If Blackboard is going to be such a bully and sue all competition out of business at least it should make more of an effort to be standards compliant.
— Allan Aug 28, 08:44 PM #
Reply to comment 5:
Have you tried Studeous at http://www.Studeous.com?
— Vic Ramon Sep 5, 02:03 AM #