A company called TechRadium is suing Blackboard in East Texas (Marshall, not Lufkin) for allegedly infringing on their patent on mass notification systems. (Blackboard bought emergency notifications company NTI recently.) im+m has a copy of the complaint posted. We’ll try to get some analysis posted when we can. In the meantime, if you have a chance to read the complaint and notice anything noteworthy in it, please comment on it here so that we can consolidate these observations and follow up.
I skimmed the complaint (but not the patents themselves)….and I couldn’t seem to find much about the specific workings of the Blackboard/NTI tool that is claimed to be infringing. Otherwise, here’s my attempt at a summary:
TechRadium has a product (Immediate Response Information System, or IRIS) that allows one person to send a single message that is automatically delivered to group members in multiple ways (cell phone, landline phone, pager, email). Group members can specify their preferred method of receiving a message.
There are three patents that TechRadium says Blackboard (through the NTI product) is infringing: one patent that lets the one person send the message, one that applies the message to a school administrator contacting employees and parents, and one that covers the school administrator situation including the creation and delivery of the message and responses from recipients.