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

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

[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.

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.

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