edupatents Content from rSmart

According to Desire2Learn’s patent blog, Blackboard has now filed suit against the USPTO (technically against the Director of the USPTO) to stop the inter partes re-exam from proceeding. Their argument is that the law states the USPTO cannot order a re-exam after a final judgment has been rendered by the courts upholding the patent.

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Here at e-Literate, we’ve been arguing for some time that part of the edupatent problem rests squarely on the shoulders of the many universities that pursue profits from intellectual property too aggressively, at the expense of their mission. Well, there’s a New York Times??piece out this week that makes the same case.

Read it, please.

According to a blog entry on Desire2Learn’s Patent blog, the US Patent and Trademark Office has denied Blackboard’s request to suspend the re-examination process. Bb and D2L have been fighting over the venue for the next round of the battle, with Blackboard asking the USPTO not to complete the re-examination process (despite having earlier said that a re-exam would only make their patent stronger) and D2L asking the US Court of Appeals not to hear Blackboard’s case until the USPTO issues a final ruling. D2L has won the first of these two battles.

This is a guest post by Jim Farmer

Two years ago while speaking at the Desire2Learn Users Conference, CEO John Baker learned that Blackboard Inc. accused Desire2Learn of infringing a Blackboard patent. Following a jury’s decision and failed attempts to reach a settlement, the dispute is now headed for appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal District, the Patent Office has yet to rule on the two challenges to parent validity by the Software Freedom Law Center and Desire2Learn, and, according to The Chronicle’s Jeff Young, a new trial looms over the latest version of Desire2Learn’s software.

Well, my flight was delayed, so I missed the opportunity to witness D2L’s court victory celebration at Graceland. And I’m sure that they celebrated tonight The court denied Blackboard’s motion for contempt, meaning that Desire2Learn version 8.3 was found to be “more than colorably different” than the infringing version of the software and the court will not find that D2L’s software infringes under the framework of this trial. This does not necessarily mean D2L 8.3 is now and forever free from Blackboard’s patent. What it does mean is that, in order to pursue D2L 8.3, Blackboard would have to start a whole new trial—basically the same long, drawn out and expensive process that they just went through.