Blackboard's LMS patent application starts to falter
There's been lots of activity this past fortnight on the Blackboard
e-learning patents. Many of you will know that Blackboard are attempting
to patent the learning management system (LMS), but fewer know that
they are also attempting to patent a much
broader range of mechanisms underlying online assessments and
portal systems, as well as the contentious ‘internet based
education support systems’ which covers LMS technology which
has got the education and open source communities backs up so much.
Blackboard filed their first lawsuit against Desire2Learn, a Canadian
LMS vendor, on the day of their patent application, however their
success is looking increasingly unlikely due to the quick action
of the open source and academic e-learning communities.
Patents are typically challenged on the grounds of prior art. For
example, if it can be shown that ‘internet based education
support systems’ were already in use elsewhere prior to the
patent's filing, then the patent can be invalidated. For this reason,
the No Education Patents
wiki provides a plain-language explanation of all 44 claims contained
in the Blackboard patent and invites the community to submit specific
examples of prior art.
In a new development, three open source LMS vendors - Sakai,
Moodle and Atutor
- hired the Software
Freedom Law Center (SFLC) to investigate and advise on the legality
of the patent application. On January 25th this resulted in the
US Patent and Trademark Office ordering a re-examination of Blackboard’s
'internet based education support systems' patent, after they found
that prior art cited in SFLC's request raised "a substantial
new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's
patent.
Now on the back foot, one week later Blackboard moved to reassure
the community with an official
pledge to “never assert its issued or pending course
management system software patents against open source software
or home-grown course management systems”, and “never
to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including
professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives,
commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary
products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications.”
While viewed with some scepticism by the open source and education
communities, this still won't be of much relief to Desire2Learn,
who have also separately requested a re-examination of the patent.
The results of the re-examination in response to Sakai/Moodle/Atutor
will probably take at least a year to complete, but that does not
mean the community should be complacent in the meantime.
So far most of the action has been from the open source and academic
e-learning communities, but it would be good to see more involvement
from the corporate e-learning sector too. So in the meantime, e-learning
practitioners across the industry should consider:
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