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

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.