US Patent Office To Re-Examine Blackboard Patent

Mr_5tein writes "Groklaw is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has just ordered a re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc, thanks to a filing by the Software Freedom Law Center. SFLC's press release states, 'The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent...' The SFLC explains that though such re-examinations may take a couple of years to complete, approximately '70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.'"

Comments

its nice, but...

[gravesb]

Its good that there are agencies out there that look for bad patents and bring them to the gov't's attention, but it would be much better if the patent clerks did a better job screening the patents, or these challenges came during the comment period.

Re:its nice, but...

[inviolet]

Right now, he patent clerk's job is to assess prior patents (easy) but not prior art (expensive).

[...] it would be much better if the patent clerks did a better job screening the patents [...]

That would require the patent clerks to be, or to hire, experts in the relevant field. That's possible but expensive. The cost of doing so is almost certainly higher than the cost of the current system: hire experts only when the patent gets challenged.

Since very few patents ever do get challenged, we are probably all saving money with the USPTO the way it is.

Who drives it and will they succeed?

[chriss]

I develop educational software myself, so I'm very pleased with this. Two points seem to be especially interesting:

• Although Blackboard sued Desire2Learn, a commercial entity, for patent infringement, the reexamination is drive by three open source projects, supported by pro-bono Software Freedom Law Center. So a tendency of free software to fight patents directly.
• According to TFA 70% of all reexaminations lead to narrowing or revoking the patent, but this is an average over all reexaminations. There has been a lot of prior art here, so I think the chances are even higher here.

"But its on the Internet" patents

[popo]

For years, the patent office was granting patents based upon adding the words "Internet based" to what was otherwise an unoriginal idea.

Education? Not new.
"But its on the Internet". Hey! That's new!

There are still literally thousands of patents floating around that were based on this mindless logic, and it still happens today.
Just last week, Microsoft patented a "digital means of recording one's life history". One might call it a diary -- or a time capsule,
but no this was something new. Why? Because its ...wait for it.... "digital".

Sigh.

Re:How much did *you* pay for this patent?

[Marnhinn]

Government is slow for many reasons - and in most cases that is a good thing given all the stupid and strange things people try to do each year (at least that I see).

Realize that there is a tradeoff - if they make it fairly simple and quick to overturn patents, then the system will get bogged down with the same amount of spam through that pipe.

The patent system was designed with the idea that it would protect the rights of the patent holder. In the beginning, it was decently hard to patent junk and things that had prior art (due to the fact that each application was reviewed by someone who hopefully had some knowledge in the area). Fast forward to today when there are millions of patents granted each year. There is no way the system can check and review each patent application before it grants the patent (as it should).

Capitalism has little to do with it - the Patent office simply is getting overwhelmed by the numbers. It is more of a lack of qualified and trained staff to do the work (cause looking at patents all day is something that doesn't pay much and is fairly boring to most people).