Supporting Open Source Software for Education
Michael Korcuska, Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation, addresses the Blackboard Patent lawsuit on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Sakai Foundation.
Greetings,
As you probably already know, we learned on Friday, March 28 that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a non- final action rejecting all 44 claims in Blackboard's U.S. Patent 6,988,138 as invalid. In 2006, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) requested a re-examination of that patent on behalf of the ATutor Community, the Moodle Community, the Sakai Foundation and the rest of the free and open source software world. The USPTO combined the SFLC request with a similar request from Desire2Learn. This rejection of the patent is good news for the education community and supports what we have believed all along--that the patent in question should never have been issued in the first place.
Because the SFLC request was accepted essentially without modification, their work on the re-examination is essentially complete and this concludes the current relationship between the SFLC and Moodle/ATutor/Sakai. We would like to thank the SFLC for their work on behalf of the entire open source community. We wish them continued success.
This hopefully marks the beginning of the end of this unfortunate and distracting chapter in the evolution of learning and collaboration software. In 2005, multiple companies and open source communities were productively innovating and competing to provide a range of educational tools. It is widely believed that the patent lawsuit impeded this healthy marketplace. At a time when there is considerable public pressure on the cost of education, this multi- million dollar patent distraction is not helpful. ATutor, Moodle and Sakai all urge a definitive end to this distraction that has been harmful to the free expression of ideas and tools for education. We believe the USPTO non-final ruling provides a basis to put this patent matter behind us and resume productive work without distraction. We urge all involved to make that so.
Best regards,
Michael Korcuska Executive Director, Sakai Foundation on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Sakai Foundation