Desire2Learn Fights eLearning Patent

Nordelius writes "Desire2Learn has responded to the patent infringement claim (PDF) cited by Blackboard Inc. regarding eLearning systems. They have argued that Blackboard was negligent in not submitting details of prior art with their patent application, and further alleged that the material described by the patent was documented in 1998 (PDF) by a collaborative international organization, IMSprogram.org, which was actually working with Blackboard at the time."

Comments

That PDF is long

[neonprimetime]

Defendant Desire2Learn Inc. ("Desire2Learn") hereby responds to the Complaint filed by Plaintiffs Blackboard Inc. ("Blackboard") as follows. Unless specifically admitted, all allegations in the complaint are denied:

I stopped reading after the first paragraph.

Re:That PDF is long

[JustNilt]

Then perhaps you should have kept reading. The only thing they "admit" is they are, indeed, an Ontario Corporation.

2. Upon information and belief, defendant Desire2Learn ("D2L") is and has been a corporation organized under the laws of Canada, having its principal place of business at 72 Victoria Street South, Suite 401, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2G 4Y9.
ANSWER: Desire2Learn states that it is a corporation organized under the laws of the Province of Ontario with its principal place of business is located at 72 Victoria Street South, Suite 401, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2G 4Y9. Desire2Learn denies the remaining allegations of this paragraph.

Patent the wheel

[theaddkid.com]

Fact just because you were the first to patent the wheel does not mean you invented it. STOP trying to sue everyone for using it.

Re:Patent the wheel

[UbuntuDupe]

Hey asshole -- I didn't patent a "wheel". I patented a "rotary device for facilitation of translational motion". That's totally different.

Re:Patent the wheel

[elerran]

hmmm. I think that you must prove that you invented something in order to patent it...

Re:Patent the wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here...

Re:Patent the wheel

[RAMMS EIN]

_The_ thing that I have against patents is that they grant a monopoly not to people who invent something, but to people who patent it. If someone else _independently_ discovers the same thing, the patent prevents them from using it (at least, without paying royalties to the patent holder).

Re:Patent the wheel

[symie5]

hmmm. I think that you must prove that you invented something in order to patent it...

I don't think so...you merely have to prove the product is novel (not identical to another invention), non-obvious (must meet a certain level of difference from a similar previous inventions), and have some useful purpose....then again, I suppose any useful invention created by someone else likely has a patent already, and the requirements for a patent nearly demand you be the inventor.

Re:Patent the wheel

[epee1221]

With the flood of patent applications coming in from everyone, patentability checking is a thing of the past. Here is a brief description of some such patents. There are patents on obvious ideas, non-trivial ideas, previously-implemented ideas, etc.

You don't have to prove much of anything to get a patent.

Re:Patent the wheel

[theaddkid.com]

Um no you don't have to prove anything a nice case in point is this guy trying to patent a moist towel dispenser just by adding a ridge to it..... http://www.inventorhome.com/inventions/Weekly/Week lySm.asp?PatNo=6889867&MaxPg=9&ClasNo=221/33/

Re:Patent the wheel

[symie5]

It is a sad thought, but the patent application process should make it difficult for so-called "patent hunters" (people who search for unpatented products in order that they might try to patent in order to receieve exclusive rights to make, use, sell, offer to sell, or import an invention). The process requires the "inventor" to provide a description of the product in enough detail to allow another individual skilled in the art to create the patented object...this is difficult to do for someone who isn't exceptionally skilled in the given area. A patent, however, isn't necessarily a complete monopoly...yes, patents give the original inventor the right to keep others from making/selling/using the original invention, but others can still file "improvement" patents to better the original product, granting them the right to make/use/sell/blahblahblah the improved version of the product. Additionally patents on a product last either 20 years (for utility and plant patents), or 14 years (for design patents). Very rarely does an invention stay valid for this long, with no necessary improvements.

Re:Patent the wheel

[symie5]

This is an improvement patent, not an original product patent. The moist towel dispenser guy merely had to prove that his "improvement" was actually a useful addition to the originally patented invention.

Re:Patent the wheel

[RAMMS EIN]

``It is a sad thought, but the patent application process should make it difficult for so-called "patent hunters" (people who search for unpatented products in order that they might try to patent in order to receieve exclusive rights to make, use, sell, offer to sell, or import an invention).''

Actually, that sort of behavior would indicate that the system is working. After all, people are inventing things to strike up the bounty that a patent offers them. That's exactly what the patent system aims to do.

``The process requires the "inventor" to provide a description of the product in enough detail to allow another individual skilled in the art to create the patented object...this is difficult to do for someone who isn't exceptionally skilled in the given area.''

That depends very much on the area. Some of the ideas that people have patented in the area of websites could have been invented by anyone who had ever used a website. Patents for methods for producing chemicals are often only obtained after years of experimenting.

``A patent, however, isn't necessarily a complete monopoly...yes, patents give the original inventor the right to keep others from making/selling/using the original invention, but others can still file "improvement" patents to better the original product, granting them the right to make/use/sell/blahblahblah the improved version of the product.''

Yes, you're right, and this seems to work very well in the chemical industry.

``Additionally patents on a product last either 20 years (for utility and plant patents), or 14 years (for design patents). Very rarely does an invention stay valid for this long, with no necessary improvements.''

But the flip side to that is that many inventions have become effectively useless by the time the patent expires.

Re:Patent the wheel

[agentcdog]

Sometimes I can't figure out what people are trying to say on here.

``Additionally patents on a product last either 20 years (for utility and plant patents), or 14 years (for design patents). Very rarely does an invention stay valid for this long, with no necessary improvements.'' But the flip side to that is that many inventions have become effectively useless by the time the patent expires.

Surely you are not arguing that a patent that covers the entire lifespan of the product are good. The point of a patent is to encourage invention, not stifle it. Many more poeple will have an incentive to improve something if they aren't forced to pay royalties for every item they sell. Patents should protect the initial offering in the market and only long enough to reasonably reward the inventor.

Re:Patent the wheel

[Linker3000]

Hey, a wheel looks like a zero - as in 'ones and zeroes' - and as we all well know, SCO owns the rights on many combinations of those, so bend over - here come the lawyers.

Re:Patent the wheel

[symie5]

I was arguing the limited time span is a good thing. ;)

Re:Patent the wheel

[symie5]

Actually, that sort of behavior would indicate that the system is working. After all, people are inventing things to strike up the bounty that a patent offers them. That's exactly what the patent system aims to do.

Whoops...When I said "It is a sad thought..." I meant for it to mean it is sad to think an original inventor might not receive the first patent on their product, and that someone else might gain the rights to the invention. In your comment, you're stating (better than I) exactly what I was trying to say. (grin) Sorry for the confusion. :P

But the flip side to that is that many inventions have become effectively useless by the time the patent expires.

Again, exactly what I was trying to say. :) Thanks for the clarification.

Re:Patent the wheel

[symie5]

Actually, I just realized that your original blockquote from me was a combination of my original comment and someone's reply to my comment. To clarify, it should read: Me: Arguing that the limited patent duration is a good thing...

"dditionally patents on a product last either 20 years (for utility and plant patents), or 14 years (for design patents). Very rarely does an invention stay valid for this long, with no necessary improvements."

A reply to my comment, reenforcing my idea, though confusing my thought for one against limited patent timeframes:

But the flip side to that is that many inventions have become effectively useless by the time the patent expires.

Oh, these silly companies and their patents

[TrappedByMyself]

When will they learn?




...crickets...

Re:Let's abolish the patent system

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

No way!!! Without patents! there will be no!! innovation!!! I mean just look at what we wouldn't have were it not for patents!! Planes, microwave ovens, fast fourier transforms, cheap pharmaceuticals, IPv6. Take eLearning systems. Without patents, there would be no eLearning!! Just look at economies like China where there are no patents!! They will never prosper!! like countries that do have them!

</ rapid patent defense>

Good grief!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Here's the abstract of the patent in question:

A system and methods for implementing education online by providing institutions with the means for allowing the creation of courses to be taken by students online, the courses including assignments, announcements, course materials, chat and whiteboard facilities, and the like, all of which are available to the students over a network such as the Internet. Various levels of functionality are provided through a three-tiered licensing program that suits the needs of the institution offering the program. In addition, an open platform system is provided such that anyone with access to the Internet can create, manage, and offer a course to anyone else with access to the Internet without the need for an affiliation with an institution, thus enabling the virtual classroom to extend worldwide.

Anybody else here agreee that this is a self-evident no-brainer webapp? I mean, Jesus Tapdancing Christ, aren't patents supposed to be for things that are "non-obvious"?

Re:Good grief!

[joe 155]

aren't patents supposed to be for things that are "non-obvious"?

you must be new here... Still, jokes asside, it is stupid; obvious, overly broad and has existed pretty much since the internet began. Basically this is passing knowledge around (as it has for thousands of years), but crucially on the internet!

When will people learn that saying "doing X, on the internet" doesn't make it new or non-obvious?

Re:Good grief!

[i.r.id10t]

Well, WebCT was doing all of this in '95 or '96 IIRC, so there's the prior art. Of course, WebCT just got purchased by blackboard ....

Re:Good grief!

[erroneus]

Heh... kinda like the fortune cookie "...in bed" thing makes everything funny right?

Re:Good grief!

[lobut]

I was an intern at Desire2Learn and I know the whole dev, qa team and I still talk a few on msn. So I'm particularly outraged at this patent. It makes no sense and the claims that they make that they're just looking for getting some payment for what they've pioneered is just a flat-out lie. Btw Blackboard software is s*** in comparison anyways.

Re:Good grief!

[Anonymous Coward]

And Blackboard is really a load of "$%. All they offer is a way to link together some
files so that only certain people have access to it, plus some other useless fluff. It has
nothing to do with LEARNING, but is a sort of poor-man's homepage with .htaccess for
professors and teachers in areas-other-than-computing.

Sheesh. They even have a patent on this load of "$%? Prior art was TICCIT, back in the 70s,
sweethearts. How can the patent office in the US be forced to stop patenting obvious things??

Re:Good grief!

[hughperkins]

Note that the only part of a patent with legal standing is the claims section http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aapatent claimsa.htm . The rest of the patent is just blah-blah to help interpret the claims. The claims are generally constructed as a first, most-generic, claim, then specializations of that. If you can demonstrate prior art for the first claim, then the patent pretty much falls apart.

The first claim is:

"1. A course-based system for providing to an educational community of users access to a plurality of online courses, comprising: a) a plurality of user computers, with each user computer being associated with a user of the system and with each user being capable of having predefined characteristics indicative of multiple predetermined roles in the system, each role providing a level of access to a plurality of data files associated with a particular course and a level of control over the data files associated with the course with the multiple predetermined user roles comprising at least two user's predetermined roles selected from the group consisting of a student role in one or more course associated with a student user, an instructor role in one or more courses associated with an instructor user and an administrator role associated with an administrator user, and b) a server computer in communication with each of the user computers over a network, the server computer comprising: means for storing a plurality of data files associated with a course, means for assigning a level of access to and control of each data file based on a user of the system's predetermined role in a course; means for determining whether access to a data file associated with the course is authorized; means for allowing access to and control of the data file associated with the course if authorization is granted based on the access level of the user of the system."

If you can show prior art within this, and show that Blackboard Inc intentionally didnt declare this within their patent, then you can sue Blackboard for inequitable conduct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequitable_conduct .

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

I think you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.imsproject.org/

A Recent BlackBoard User

[RingDev]

I just wrapped up a degree and I took a handful of classes online (mostly ones I didn't actually care about learning in as I have found most online classes to be almost humorous in their education value). And I have to say, BlackBoard is a decent web application. That's it. There is absolutely nothing in it that I have not seen in some other piece of software. There is no unique combination of functionality. It is just a series of forums, file managers, and a grading page. It is configured in a solid way, and is laid out to be relatively easy to navigate, but as the parent said, there is nothing Patently Original about the software.

-Rick

Re:A Recent BlackBoard User

[Megajim]

Try using BlackBoard as an instructor. The layout is cluttered and terrible, and some key functionality is buried. Tech-saavy instructors don't have a problem with probing and clicking until they find the right control, but this is used by all sorts of people, many of whom may already have difficulties with seemingly basic online navigation. My issue with the BlackBoard patent is that this is a bloated system which could use improvement (and the ideas are definitely being improved upon, just look at Moodle and Sakai), but if they're going to chase down anyone who's improvements are too effective, then we're stuck with 1999 technology and a "figure it out yourself" approach to human-computer interaction. Moodle and Sakai certainly don't have the resources to combat a lawsuit, so more power to Desire2Learn, whatever power they might have. As for your "humorous" experience, an online course requires more planning from instructors than an in-person course. When that effort isn't put forth, it's often obvious. Additionally, there can be more required of students, as they may need to go to extra efforts to make forum postings or focus on the format of assignments. I'm not assuming that you're blaming the medium, but I hope that others reading your impressions don't come away with that notion. I have taken many online courses which were far more immersive and robust than most of the in-person courses I've had. -Jim

Re:A Recent BlackBoard User

[Petrushka]

From the point of view of a university lecturer: agreed.

Incidentally, precisely because of this suit I've foresworn the use of Blackboard for a course I'm going to be teaching over the summer. Instead I'll be using good old fashioned WWW pages in conjunction with a password-protected Google Group. That combo provides the same functionality, and without any of the slowness and unreliability. Oh, and they don't cost six-figure sums per annum.

Re:A Recent BlackBoard User

[RingDev]

If you think BlackBoard is bad, you should see CLEGA! CLEGA makes Black Board look like a golden app.

My apologies If I have offended any online instructors as well. Although, there are a good number of online instructors who aught to to be offended. I went to a private college (thank you GI Bill!!!), my freshman courses had maybe 30-40 students, we graduated the Assoc degree with 7. Two cohorts combined for the bach degree and we graduated 8. Another cohort jumped in and we graduated the 2nd bach degree with 5. So, having the experience of classes with huge amount of student-teacher time (classes were block scheduled 3-5 hours at a time, twice per week for 8 weeks each) was a great learning environment. Some classes (non-lab classes) I took online to save myself an hour of commuting to school twice a week.

From what I saw online, most of my teachers had 6+ classes with 20-40 students in each class. Many teachers depended on automated tools to check that you posted and graded papers purely on MS Office's grammar and spell checker. With the huge student - teacher ratio (1 teacher for 240 students!!) independent help was a joke, there was little educational interaction with the instructors, and all round the education was purely limited to what you were willing to teach yourself.

Now, I'm no lazy bastard, I worked my ass off in those online classes just as I did in my campus classes. But the fact remains that I could turn in a paper that I knew my campus instructors would fail me for, knowing that it would get a C in the online classes. My very last class online was of such poor quality that I decided to do just that. My GPA was pretty much locked at 3.85, as long as I didn't fail the course it wouldn't change more than .05 or so. I aced all of the homework (preset labs from the book that were graded for completion, not quality), I commented in all of the discussions (the post's date stamps were used in an automated system that gave us grades based on when we posted, not what we posted), and put together a top notch final project (a vector based logo for an ACME fish company). Then came the final paper. I wrote a paper so bad it was painful. I cited Fark as my primary source and didn't include the reference list. I used lewd and inappropriate images as subject matter for the paper. Had I turned that paper into any campus instructor, their either would have given it back to me, or given me a failing grade. The score came back from my online instructor as a 70%. That specific class was one of the worst experiences I have had in online classes. But my best experiences aren't a whole lot better.

There are some teachers out there that I think can use the web as a teaching Aid. I had one campus instructor who was picking up a mixed class (online assignments, on campus labs, lectures on both). He was a meticilous man with a history in IT management and a solid grasp of his subject matter. I would be very interested to see how his online work turns out.

In short, I find the teacher-student interaction online to be limited, the expectations to be lower, and the completion to be easier in online classes. With a few gems of teachers scattered about.

-Rick

Re:A Recent BlackBoard User

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wrapped up a degree and I took a handful of classes online (mostly ones I didn't actually care about learning in

You didn't care about learning, so you didn't learn?

Seems to me that the problem here doesn't lie with "on-line classes".

Re:A Recent BlackBoard User

[RingDev]

Fair dig. My first online classes I believe were "Multicultural studies" and "Public Relations". MCS turned into yet another "How the white Anglo-Saxon male has ruined the world" class. Public Relations I had high hopes for though. The class sucked. Expectations were low, grades were inflated, and the teacher's interaction was severely limited. But I worked my ass off anyways because PR is loosely related to the direction I am going with my career. I learned a lot in that class, because I wanted to. I did research, I found alternative sources, I argued differing theories and provoked conversations in the forums.

I agree with you, if you have no desire to learn, you will not learn anything in the class. But if you have a desire to learn, just because you did learn does not mean it was the teacher who taught you.

-Rick

Prospecting in the idea space

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Sooner or later (preferably sooner) we need a public, open forum for idea submission, to serve as a massive clearinghouse full of what will one day be "prior art" in the public domain. Today, the most basic abstract entities and processes (e.g. OneClick) can fall out of the public idea space & into someone's patent portfolio. If ideas start being publicly described, catgegorized, related & strung together into systems in the simplest form feasible and as early as possible, there's at least some chance of substantiating claims of prior art and obviousness when challenging IP infringement claims in court.

So... any volunteers to help with the design of the Taxonomy of Obvious Ideas (tooi.org)?

Re:Prospecting in the idea space

[sglines]

When I was an adjunct professor of CS we had blackboard at the college but the sysadmins didn't have it set up properly so I used yahoo groups for my classes and it worked just fine.

I don't see them going after Yahoo. If Yahoo can serve as a "learning" environment both inside and outside academia I'm not sure that blackboard has ANY valid claims.

Re:Prospecting in the idea space

[plexium_nerd]

This already exists, in a way. It's called Defensive Publishing. There's a public database where documents can be submitted at priorartdatabase.net. However, it still costs money to post a document. One could essentially replace this with a wiki and make it free.

"Nearly any document that describes an innovation can qualify as publishable evidence of prior art. Brochures, conference papers and company invention disclosure forms are all fair game. The important thing in establishing prior art is to make sure that a document has a clear publication date."

Re:Prospecting in the idea space

[plexium_nerd]

please email me. I'd like to help out with your idea.

Re:Prospecting in the idea space

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Thanks for the offer... I will do that. You can reach me at paul + smith + 68; same domain as your own.

The Patent Card

[plexium_nerd]

When a company patents a solution provided piece of software, I view this as a realization that their software ( and profits ) are sinking and will never have the versatility or affordability of other, more useable solutions. So they play the "Patent Card" to lock their crap in.

It seems software patents only protects the first person to file a patent instead of the person, or community, who invented it and willingly shared it.

Question: any liability?

[Baavgai]

Other than having the patent revoked, what is the real penalty to filing a blatantly invalid one?

It would seem that there is no incentive not to file for every idea imaginable, if the repercussions are non existent or minimal.

Re:Question: any liability?

[udoschuermann]

I'm afraid that Blackboard's motivation may be to grind down D2L financially until D2L can be bought cheap or simply driven from the market. If the tactic works, we'll see more of it. This one is a test case and it's probably a lot cheaper and less risky to sue than buy D2L. The fact that they didn't approach D2L first with demands for licensing fees says to me that they probably expected D2L to show them the door at once, so why not skip that step and go straight for litigation? :-/

Blackboard wouldn't be the first to use that tactic and they won't be the last. As a public company they are beholden to their shareholders who want to profit from a rising stock price. Any considerations of a moral nature (crushing competitors, eating them alive, spitting out the pieces) are often of secondary importance at best. That's the ugly side of capitalism.

IANAL, but if the patent is proved invalid somehow (perhaps due to undisclosed but obvious prior art, which seems to be at least one of D2L's counter arguments) Blackboard may simply lose the suit by default and go home. For a while their stock will go "on sale" (not unlike right now), which is good for speculators. Eventually public memory of these events will fade, the stock price recovers, the world keeps spinning, and Jack Bauer has yet another bad day.

Disclaimer: Long ago I used to work for Bb. I own Bb stock. I'm rather unhappy with this litigation. :(

Re:Question: any liability?

[Qzukk]

Disclaimer: Long ago I used to work for Bb. I own Bb stock. I'm rather unhappy with this litigation. :(

Well then, withdraw your proxy's voting rights, attend the next stockholders' meeting, and voice your concerns.

More than "must get money at all costs" corporations are beholden to follow their stockholders' wishes. If (in the general scheme of things) stockholders start to express concern that their company is wasting its money patenting someone else's invention, or better yet, express concern that the company will be liable for the other side's costs for this stupid litigation, then perhaps corporations will stop doing this.

Of course your voice is only as large as your share, and no doubt the majority of the stock is actually held by other soulless corporations that must get money at all costs, so it probably will not do all that much. But at least it's a start.

Re:Question: any liability?

[kansas1051]

It costs a lot of money to file a patent application, which is the only real disincentive not to file tons of applications.

If you file for a patent, knowing its invalid, and your patent issues, your patent can be invalidated for inequitable conduct.

Also, if you know your patent is invalid, and try to assert it (i.e. sue someone for patent infringement), you could commit patent misuse (rendering your patent unenforceable) or violate various antitrust (Sherman Act section 1) and unfair competition laws.

All of these issues are litigated in most patent infringement suits, and patent owners often lose as a result.

Re:Question: any liability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: Long ago I used to work for Bb. I own Bb stock. I'm rather unhappy with this litigation. :(

Look into the concept of "shareholder's lawsuit".

Blackboard management has made a colossal blunder; now their core customers wouldn't piss on them if their guts were on fire. Be looking for a major exodus the next time contract renewals come around.

That means that your stock is only going to go down. You and the other stockholders should hold management responsible for this.

Re:Question: any liability?

[back_pages]

I've just read the blurb, so don't take this as gospel regarding this specific case.

The allegation that they withheld prior art is in reference to 37 CFR 1.56, the Duty to Disclose information to the patent office. In brief, this means that if you (the attorney, inventor, or assignee (owner) of the patent application) knows that there is some relevant prior art, regardless of whether or not that establishes novelty or non-obviousness, you are obligated to provide those documents to the USPTO. This is largely enforced with an honor system, because it is absurdly impractical for patent examiners to investigate what information you had available to you, in addition to the usual issues of patentability.

However, this honor system has some razor sharp penalties. If it is determined in a courtroom that you withheld documents that were known during prosecution at the USPTO, it is very likely that this will be ruled as inequitable conduct. This means that the patent which issued will almost certainly be ruled invalid. It can also mean that OTHER patents prosecuted by the same inventor, assignee, and attorney can be found invalid under the "doctrine of unclean hands". (One instance of inequitable conduct very often leads to similar determinations in other circumstances.) Further, once an registered practitioner (a person who has passed the Patent Bar, not necessarily an attorney) has been tangled up in one of these situations, and is the person at fault, his/her career in patent law is essentially over. (If the inventor withheld information, the attorney should emerge unscathed. If the attorney is at fault, he had better be up to date in malpractice insurance.) It is possible to have your registration revoked, which literally means you cannot practice before the USPTO. Short of that, it is the type of black eye on your resume that prevents you from working again.

So, in conclusion, 37 CFR 1.56 is an honor system with a razor blade penalty. If you're aware of material that is relavant to the issue of patentability, it should be provided to the USPTO else you risk all sorts of legal (and financial) headaches down the road.

Learning is fun!

[Quiet_Desperation]

Ah, educators! So noble!

Actually, there *is* a lesson here for all of us, although not the one the evil[TM] lawyers and MBAbees would want us to learn.

Negligent? Hm.

[jkabbe]

They have argued that Blackboard was negligent in not submitting details of prior art with their patent application

Negligence won't cut it. On the other hand, it appears that they have extensively argued that Blackboard fraudulently withheld prior art during prosecution.

That doesn't mean it will go anywhere. Allegations of inequitable conduct are fairly common by defendants. It's very hard to prove an intent to deceive, though.

Learning is free

[taos23]

To higher ed faculty who are unaware, Available is a modern day web-app, alternative to BB, et al.

Re:Learning is free

[Petrushka]

Thanks for that, I wasn't aware of it. That may be very useful, since I don't have the necessary skills to set up Moodle by myself. In my efforts to boycott Blackboard I had been planning to use open-access WWW pages, supplemented by other facilities, for my coming summer courses; but I'll take a close look at this (Incidentally, they call themselves Nfomedia, not "Available". Is that an old name?)

They do say it's currently available only to 104 universities, mostly in the USA and a few in the UK, but it doesn't look like there should be much difficulty in adding universities to that list. I have a minor concern about privacy -- no institution located in the USA can guarantee anyone's privacy these days -- but, really, in that respect it's certainly no worse than Blackboard as administered by a university IT department. :-)

Re:Learning is free

[YoungHack]

Another alternative to BB is Moodle, http://moodle.org/

Umm Cyber llearning was around before 1998

[slashdotet]

I don't think this could hold. I went to a cyber school that has been operationg since 1995 http://www.stgabrielschool.com/ so this "online" learning thing isn't new at least not to me. I did grades 8 - 12 online at home !

My Blackboard experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at Algonquin College, teaching a hybrid course (half online, half lecture), and use Blackboard every day. It's buggy, to say the least. Database errors, server crashes, are quite common. Often Blackboard will just disappear for a day or two. The interface is just awful. I know some professors who simply refuse to use it and post material on their own websites instead. In some ways, Blackboard just creates endless problems for me -- students who can't submit assignments, students who can't access it from home for some reason, students who don't know how to access online reading or check their grades.

On the plus side, Blackboard gives me a continous channel to provide information to my students,a logical way to organize the course, and saves me a lot of marking time sometimes (since the server will administer and grades some forms of tests, ie. multiple choice/fill in the blank).

So I think this type of education groupware is great. But if this patent means that Blackboard will be the only example of it, then I shudder...

Re:My Blackboard experience

[symbolic]

So I think this type of education groupware is great. But if this patent means that Blackboard will be the only example of it, then I shudder...

This is exactly the problem with software patents. Parties can claim ownership of entire concepts, and prevent anyone from offering a competing, potentailly better alternative. We're essentially stuck with whatever the so-called "inventor" wants to provide, quality notiwithstanding.

Re:Let's abolish the patent system

[gunner2028]

China does have patents. Otherwise a humorous post.

Re:Negligent? Hm.

[tinkerghost]

I'm not sure you have to prove intent to decieve. All that needs to be proved is that they knew of a specific piece of prior art and failed to include it in the submission. There is a line you have to sign atesting that you have provided all known prior art. Failing to provide something you know about would be perjury and certainly grounds to invalidate the patent. (Perjury is a felony & there are laws on the books to prohibit profiting from felonious acts - they should apply here.)
When you file a patent, you are supposed to include all known prior art which directly applies to your patent, along with an explanation of why your patent in new & novel in light of the prior art. The patent examiner is supposed to just be looking for stuff you didn't find already, not do all the work.

Stick it to 'em, D2L!

[dmatos]

Ha! If you make it to the very end, you'll find that D2L is counter-suing for five things, amongst which are:

The court dismiss Blackboard's request for relief
The court find the patent unenforceable
The court find the patent invalid
Attorney and legal fees for D2L's defense of this case
any other fines that the court deems appropriate

Man, I hope they win.

Whiteboards

[nebula169]

Hey! Atleast they decided to implement whiteboards instead of stealing those other guys' blackboard idea.

Re:Negligent? Hm.

[jkabbe]

What you are describing is a breach of the Duty of Candor and Good Faith. However, that alone is insufficient to render a patent unenforceable. You must also prove that the applicant intended to deceive the USPTO.

Microsoft-Related Patent Troll Attacks

[schestowitz]

They also threaten Moodle, which is FOSS.

Patent fight rattles academic computing

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060827/a p_on_hi_te/e_learning_dispute

Also, Quote:
------------
Every day, millions of students taking online college courses act in
much the same way as their bricks-and-mortar counterparts. After
logging on, they move from course to course and do things like submit
work in virtual drop boxes and view posted grades - all from a
program running on a PC.
Click to learn more...

It may seem self-evident that virtual classrooms should closely
resemble real ones. But a major education software company contends it
wasn't always so obvious. And now, in a move that has shaken up the
e-learning community, Blackboard Inc. has been awarded a patent
establishing its claims to some of the basic features of the software
that powers online education.
-------------
End quote

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060827/ap_on _hi_te/e_learning_dispute

See also:

http://money.netscape.cnn.com/story.jsp?f loc=FF-APO-1333&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20060827%2F14 57575948.htm&sc=1333
http://abcnews.go.com/Techno logy/wireStory?id=2362437
http://yro.slashdot.org /article.pl?sid=06/08/02/1217219

This may appear to be just a new, obnoxious example of patent trolling
(in this case by Blackboard).  However, there are connections between
Blackboard and Microsoft:

http://www.blackboard.com/company/pr ess/release.aspx?id=510542
http://www.internetnew s.com/bus-news/article.php/751121
http://www.bizj ournals.com/washington/stories/2001/04/23/daily13. html
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/20 01/12/04/news/4013.shtml
http://chronicle.com/fre e/v48/i13/13a02701.htm

Quote:
----------
Char lene A. Douglas isn't surprised that Microsoft wants to get into
the booming business
of online-software systems for higher education, or that it has
recently formed a close alliance with Blackboard, a company whose
software helps colleges put their courses on the Internet....

In what the two companies call a "preferred relationship," Microsoft
will promote Blackboard to its education customers and Blackboard will
suggest that its clients use the Microsoft Windows operating system to
run Blackboard on their servers to take advantage of special features
available only to Microsoft users.
----------
End quote

See also:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b 1?release_id=98283

Re:Negligent? Hm.

[tinkerghost]

Proving they knew of something and signed the document attesting that to their knowledge there was no additional prior art proves a willful act of deception. Given the fraudulent nature of the filing, it should therefore be invalid. Of course this is big business & the law, so should doesn't really play a big role.

Re:Negligent? Hm.

[jkabbe]

It has nothing to do with "big business." What you're describing simply isn't the law.

Boycott Blackboard Petition

[audiocourses]

Online learning provider Blackboard, Inc. announced that it has patented the Learning Management System (LMS). Prior art exists in many forms. Please join us in signing the petition below to boycott Blackboard, Inc. for fabricating this ill-conceived and illegitimate patent against the education industry. We fully support those companies that are rightfully fighting this attack on the education industry. Boycott Blackboard Petition

Re:Negligent? Hm.

[tinkerghost]

It should the way the law is applied. If I do my taxes & sign that I have no additional income, when in fact I have an entire 2nd job, then I have:

1. Committed purjury - that line states under penalty of purjury.
2. Committed fraud - I knowingly made false claims with the intent of profiting from those claims.

That's 2 felonies. IIRC - I have only worked on 1 - that last line on the patent also states that the statements given are true under penalty of perjury. Now if I write up a patent, sign that I know of no additional prior art - full well knowing that there is, I have committed the same 2 felonies. Given federal statutes that a person may not profit from the procedes of a crime - the patent cannot be enforced.
Life is simple, no new laws, just the application of the ones already on the books. Also even if it's not an issue of perjury, it's still fraud - and fraud ranging into millions of dollars falls into felony teritory.