BlackBoard patents invalidated!

Fri Apr 4 11:25:00 2008 EDT (-0400 GMT)

How’d I miss this? www.campustechnology.com/articles/60271/. Maybe it’s just as well that I didn’t post this around April 1st.

Credit to Giulia for spotting it.

There were 10 total issues raised in the reexamination request covering all 44 of the claims in the Blackboard patent. The process isn’t over, and the patent is technically still valid, but it is very unlikely that it’ll cover much at all when it’s all over. As I’ve always said, Blackboard might have invented some things, but not everything to do with on-line learning.

My favourite quote (as it often does) come from Eben Moglen “… the education community should be pleased to hear that Blackboard has now been deprived of the opportunity to commit more ‘thuggery'”.

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