Supporting Open Source Software for Education
As promised, here’s the interview:
Click here to view the embedded video.
(cc) photo credit: zolierdos
I’m a little late on this one, but late last week the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Blackboard’s rehearing petition. Their only recourse now would be to appeal to the United States Supreme Court and hope that the court miraculously decides to hear their case. As a result, Blackboard will have to return roughly $3.3 million to Desire2Learn, wiping out 100% of the company’s earnings for 2008.
photo credit: Kongharald
There’s a blog post update from Desire2Learn on the latest back and forth between them and Blackboard over the patents. (Remember, there’s more than one patent now.) Here’s the latest, as near as I can follow it:
Update: Patently-O blogger Dennis Crouch has posted a legal analysis of the ruling in which he concludes, “Defendant Desire2Learn wins a complete victory (after a few million in attorney fees).”
On the one hand, Thomson Reuters’ lawsuit against Zotero has been dismissed. Details are scant at this point. We don’t yet know the grounds for dismissal or whether Thomson Reuters will pursue other legal action. On the other hand, the U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate whether Desire2Learn is violating trade laws with patent infringement on some of the claims in Blackboard’s original ‘138 patent.
Here’s the chronology for the Blackboard anti-trust investigation as far as we know so far:
photo credit: wandrerstefan
As others have already noted, Desire2Learn has updated their patent info blog with a smorgasbord of new information. (Frustratingly, the posts on the blogs don’t seem to have permalinks. Except when they do. Ugh.) Anyway, you can go to their blog and look at the April 29th entry for the details, but here are the highlights from my perspective:
Once again, Jeff Bohrer gets the scoop. (Add this guy to your feed reader, for sure.) Blackboard has apparently been issued a Canadian patent comparable to its US patent and is suing D2L in Canada. As Jeff puts it,
To summarize, here are the active proceedings in this complicated story listed in chronological order:
- Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn (US Federal Court)
- US Patent Office review of Blackboard’s “‘138″ patent
- Blackboard vs. US Patent Office (US Federal Court)
- Blackboard complaint aginst Desire2Learn to US International Trade Commission
- Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn (Canada Federal Court)
Jeff Boerer has a good find on this. It looks like Blackboard has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission aleging that Desire2Learn is illegally importing software into the United States that violates a U.S. patent. I don’t know anything more than what Jeff has posted, so I recommend you go to his blog and read his post.