Riley [13 August 2006 07:18 AM]

I am an internet consultant and Blackboard will never recieve a recommendation from me. I cannot in good faith reccommend my clients to dirty company and patent troll.

James Lyon [13 August 2006 07:43 AM]

Well, Blackboard has been growing in size for a long time now. Acquiring company after company, some of which have been around much longer than Blackboard. Therefore, their claims to the patent are blurred, and the e-learning community must work even harder to undo the damage that the patent has done already. I work as a software architect for a company who has more than a decade of prior art and I don't feel worried about Blackboard's claims as much as the patent office's apparent lack of research. It's as if, the patent office doesn't care about technology enough to look into individual filings truthfullness.

Ryan [13 August 2006 07:56 AM]

By the way, the plain English translation is at the No Edu Patents site, not at Wikipedia.

Alfred Essa [13 August 2006 02:16 PM]

I am surprised that the open source community has remained largely silent on the issue of software patents. Richard Stallman seems to be the lone voice.

Michael Feldstein [13 August 2006 03:31 PM]

Ryan is correct; the patent language is at NoEduPatents.org. That said, the Wikipedia entry on the History of Virtual Learning Environments became one of the early repositories for the prior art effort.

By the way, Al Essa, whose name links to his blog on his comment above, also has some outstanding analysis of the patent issues on said blog. Well worth the read.

Koshchei [13 August 2006 04:03 PM]

I certainly hope the EFF is considering this for its "Patent Buster" project. They've already managed to get a couple of ridiculous patents reexamined:

http://www.eff.org/patent/

Alfred Essa [13 August 2006 05:41 PM]

I contacted the EFF a couple of weeks ago but they have yet to respond. Does any know how we can get it on their radar?

Luis Villa [13 August 2006 09:37 PM]

Al: I nearly emailed you this morning about this; should have known you'd already be on it. :) I might suggest poking the Public Patent Foundation (pubpat.org)- this patent seems right up their alley.

Scott Petersen [14 August 2006 09:32 AM]

I worked on Computer Based Training for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Postal Service and in private industry between 1991 and 1998. After a quick perusal of the English translation, I didn't see anything in their claims that isn't something we were doing fifteen years ago.

Chris Coppola [18 August 2006 09:24 AM]

Keep an eye on the Sakai Foundation. The Foundation has retained open source attorney Eben Moglen and his Software Freedom Law Center to fight the patent.

From the press release:

"The recent announcement by Blackboard that it is attempting to assert patent rights over simple and longstanding online technologies as applied to the area of course management systems and e-learning technologies, and its subsequent litigation against a smaller commercial competitor constitutes a threat to the effective and open development of software for higher education and the values underlying such open activities."

Chris Coppola [18 August 2006 09:25 AM]

Oops. Here's the URL for that press release:
http://www.sakaiproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=442&Itemid=312

WL Wong [21 August 2006 05:16 PM]

Hi,

Spotted this today...
Blackboard sues, gets sued over online process
patent http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2006/08/21/story3.html

Anyone knows more?

Cheers
WL

Kevin [30 August 2006 08:25 PM]

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Anonymous [30 April 2007 05:30 AM]

This patent is to broad and general. There are other products such as the Lotus learning space that implemented this concept years ago. Generic patents of this type have really gotten out of hand.

Randall Shimizu [30 April 2007 05:31 AM]

This patent is to broad and general. There are other products such as the Lotus learning space that implemented this concept years ago. Generic patents of this type have really gotten out of hand.

Randall Shimizu [30 April 2007 05:32 AM]

This patent is to broad and general. There are other products such as the Lotus learning space that implemented this concept years ago. Generic patents of this type have really gotten out of hand.

RecyDrync [ 4 October 2007 11:32 PM]

Привет из Crawley

А вообще, буду рад советам.

freeten [ 4 October 2007 11:38 PM]

Привет.
Продаю персональный сертификат WebMoney за $99.
Можете проверить: WMID 322973398779 Redfern
Всё чисто, не одной жалоб. Сделан на утерянные документы. Всё законно.
Если нужно, то есть сертификаты ещё.
Стучацо в личную почту на Вебмани.

Это не спам. Не пишите на мой WMID жалобы в арбитраж Вебмани.

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