Supporting Open Source Software for Education
(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:
Blackboard and TechRadium have apparently come to some sort of cross-licensing agreement on their emergency notification patents. This isn’t surprising. What we don’t know is whether anyone is paying anyone else as part of the cross-licensing agreement. Since Blackboard lost a ruling in their assertion of their patent against TechRadium, the more likely scenario would be that Blackboard is paying TechRadium as part of the deal. That’s just speculation, though. If anyone has any information on this, let me know.
No related posts.
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.
Today Blackboard announced that ANGEL’s Ray Henderson will be the new President of the Blackboard Learn division. This is great news. Ray is one of the best executives in educational technology today, known for both his competence, his integrity, and his leadership in supporting open standards and openness in general. Does this mean a new beginning for Blackboard?
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)