{"id":312,"date":"2006-08-03T15:21:32","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T15:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/2006\/08\/04\/blackboard-goes-metallica\/"},"modified":"2006-08-04T11:55:26","modified_gmt":"2006-08-04T15:55:26","slug":"blackboard-goes-metallica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/2006\/08\/03\/blackboard-goes-metallica\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackBoard goes Metallica"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday I found out that BlackBoard<\/a> (Bb) had been issued a patent on eLearning<\/a>. Bb recently bought WebCt inc. which makes the learning management system that consumes most of my days at work. I was dismissive of it until I learnt about the subsequent lawsuits against Desire2Learn<\/a> (D2L) the day afterwards.<\/p>\n

As far as I’m concerned it’s a problem with the US software patent system more than anything else. The reason I initially dismissed it was I assumed it was akin to Amazon’s “single click purchase” patent and the collection Microsoft and Apple hold against each other in a kind of cold war — then Bb sued D2L (see Slashdot<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Now I’m a little more concerned and hope that the patent gets invalidated, take a look at these gems (from US Patent office)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

9. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise an asynchronous communication file.<\/p>\n

10. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise a synchronous communication file.<\/p>\n

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the grade is made available to the student user.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of prior art on these points, some might even pre-date Matthew Pittinsky’s (Bb chairman of the board and co-founder) birth! I’m not sure if Bb can win on a few points of a patent that is otherwise invalid.<\/p>\n

I left the international WebCT Conference in Chicago with a relativly good feeling about Bb and what their future plans were, even if I’ve never been a big fan of CEO Michael Chasen — that feeling is rapidly going away and according to the academic technology related list serves, I’m not the only one who feels this way.<\/p>\n

To use a Chasen-ism, BlackBoard is becoming a thought leader<\/em> in business bullying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday I found out that BlackBoard (Bb) had been issued a patent on eLearning. Bb recently bought WebCt inc. which makes the learning management system that consumes most of my days at work. I was dismissive of it until I learnt about the subsequent lawsuits against Desire2Learn (D2L) the day afterwards. As far as… Continue Reading BlackBoard goes Metallica<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,2,8,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}