All 44 Blackboard Patent Claims Invalidated

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Patent & Trademark Office has invalidated all 44 claims in Blackboard's patent. While this is a non-final action [PDF], which means that Blackboard will be able to appeal, it does represent a win for the Software Freedom Law Center which had requested the reexamination of Blackboard's patent. It is not yet known how this will affect the $3.1M judgment Blackboard won from Desire2Learn."

Comments

Where to Send Your Check

[MichaelCrawford]

You can donate online via Google Checkout, Network for Good or PayPal from the Software Freedom Law Center's donation page, or mail a check to:

Software Freedom Law Center
1995 Broadway, 17th floor
New York, NY 10023

They're a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so if you're in the US, your contribution will be tax-deductible.

It's expensive to fight lawsuits. Vote with your wallet!

The "legislative intent" that never was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody ever liked software or business patents. It all started with a court case that opened the gates and once that happened an arms race ensued. The very idea is absurd

The court's logic was based on flawed logic even back then:
As has now been unearthed, they didn't properly check their sources, misquoting a Senate (by taking too few words, out of context, as their famous citation) which had actually said:

a machine or manufacture, which may include anything under the sun that is made by man,...is not necessarily patentable

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Get rid of the USPTO

[Kiaser Zohsay]

I would think the Mcdonalds court case will have prevented many accidents due to the change in working practice by Mcdonalds. This change in practice was not due to the court case, this is strictly marketing. McDonald's is trying to compete with Starbuck's by being more "full service". Also note the Iced Coffee available at McDonald's in some regions.

Blackboard was hated before the patent issue

[The Second Horseman]

If you talked to CIOs at schools and IT staff, they've hated Blackboard for years. The software was often junk. Early versions of 6 had significant gradebook problems, and there were a handful of security problems that were just mind-blowing. Of course, they mark their release notes with the list of fixes "proprietary and confidential", which never wins you friends. No, in addition to the scummy salespeople (an especially weasel-like variety) and ridiculous, ever-increasing prices (often mid-year, but late enough to make it hard to jump ship), the support was just terrible. Really, really bad. They didn't really know the software, didn't know the platforms. Expected you to actually build multiple test environments to replicate the problem (if the problem was between even point releases) for them to remotely connect to - they didn't have internal access to test system (this was in the 6.x timeframe). Also, they'd come out with minor (or not-so-minor) releases in mid-semester and tell you that they were required updates to get support. You can't upgrade an LMS in mid-semester at most institutions. Point releases that makes major changes to the database schema and structure are less than attractive, either.

A number of small and medium sized schools are going to Moodle and customizing it for their environment (for example, incorporating home-grown services into it, etc). Moodle's been growing by leaps and bounds the last year or two, and I expect it's going to keep growing. Sakai's harder to implement, unless you have a herd of Java developers at your disposal. Faculty always want significant local customization.

Re:Get rid of the USPTO

[jco]

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on MARKETING. And on "licensing" drugs developed by the National Institutes of Health and the universities and teaching hospitals it funds.

Re:Hopefully this means my school will drop softwa

[pedalman]

At our school, Blackboard was set up with the thought of, "Hey, let's start offering online course content. We'll buy Blackboard and it will be our silver bullet."

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

When students started buying computers with Vista, Blackboard would not play right with them. They had all kinds of issues. It won't even play right with Internet Explorer at our school. I'm just glad I'm not the Blackboard admin.

Note to my college administration:
Ever wonder why the University of Phoenix is so expensive? It's because they attempted to take the time to design their online program from the ground up. They also hired the staff to make it work. That takes a lot of money. They didn't take the cheap way out by buying Blackboard and saying, "Now we are an online school." F$%^tards!!!! You would have been better off by using Moodle or Double Choco Latte. At least you wouldn't have blown all that money. Dare I say that you are once again "trying to polish the turd"?

Re:That's a joke, right?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, what you're saying would make sense on the surface, but when you realize how little training doctors are required to have in pharmacology, you'll gain a new appreciation for those pharmacists you just slammed. My father would have been dead several times over if it hadn't been for the pharmacist connecting the dots and realizing one or the other of his physicians had just prescribed a killer combo. That happens more often than you might think, sometimes because of a mistake, a lack of knowledge, or a lack of communication between doctors. Either way, there's a reason that pharmacists study pharmacology. They're more than just robotic pill dispensers.

When your doctor prescribes something for you, go talk to your pharmacist about your entire drug picture before you start swallowing those little pills. That can very well save your life, particularly if you have something like a heart condition.