The “Ed Tech” category includes posts about educational technology products themselves, including LMSs and other learning platforms, adaptive learning and other digital curricular materials products, learning analytics, and educational apps of all types. It also includes technical aspects of ed tech products, especially interoperability.
This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.
At the December 2006 Sakai Conference in Atlanta many expressed the view that patents inhibit collaboration and innovation in teaching and learning. But that was not the view expressed by higher education representatives in last month’s Congressional hearing.
As has already been reported in several other fora, Blackboard and iParadigms (the maker of Turnitin) have settled their patent dispute out of court and are working together again as partners. I’m not sure that we’ll ever really know what happened between the two companies, but any amicable settlement that leads to the non-assertion of an edupatent is good news for universities.
The latest news is that Blackboard has stated that the language of the intellectual property waiver in their contract with iParadigms was specific to that contract, motivated by specific concerns about the particular company and business relationship involved. Blackboard further states the language is not present in their standard Building Blocks contract or other partner contacts. This is an important clarification and one that I am happy to pass on.
But from the editorial perspective of this blog, the contract issue is and always has been a side issue anyway. The reason that the Blackboard v iParadigms story hit these pages in the first place was because it was about one educational software company asserting a patent against another. Now, because Blackboard was the one to file suit, it was logical to speculate that Blackboard was the one asserting the patent. Logical but incorrect, as it turns out. And the fact that the actors are in different roles than we might have thought should not change our views on the actions themselves. I have argued in these pages that asserting patents within the educational software sector, on balance, does more to stifle innovation than to foster it, meaning that its net effect is exactly the opposite of the intended effect of patent law. If one believes that to be true, then one must oppose the actions of any company seeking to pro-actively assert a patent for educational software and support the right of any company to mount a vigorous defense. There are many situational facts in this particular case that are unclear, but one central, salient fact is clear: iParadigms was seeking to assert a patent for educational software. From the perspective of the edupatent crisis, all other details are ancillary.
While it can be tempting to equate poetic justice with actual justice, the two are not the same at all. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Stephen has a press statement [.doc] from iParadigms, as does Al Essa. There are definitely (at least) two sides to this story, but I do want to highlight one bullet point from the statement:
Our letters asked Blackboard to educate us regarding whether a new technology Blackboard acquired was related to our patent so that we could see if it was appropriate to establish an additional business relationship with Blackboard.
It’s hard to read “establish an additional business relationship” in this context as meaning anything other than Blackboard paying patent royalties to iParadigm. Generally, when you get a letter from a lawyer saying that your products may infringe on patents owned by the lawyer’s client, you’re not going to interpret that letter as the opening for a cheerful talk regarding how you all can do more business together.
I think it’s important to be clear about the nature of iParadigm’s letter when evaluating the appropriateness of Blackboard’s response to it.
Update: immagic has several more documents available (one, two, three, four) on what is apparently an outgrowth of a long-running conflict between iParadigms, the company that owns Turnitin, and Sciworth, the company that owns the Safe Assignment anti-plagiarism technology licensed by Blackboard. I haven’t read any of this documentation but am pointing you to it in the interest of getting as much raw data out to the community as possible.
More documentation is available. Apparently, Blackboard is not threatening Turnitin with a patent. Turnitin is threatening Blackboard with their patent. Blackboard is pro-actively filing suit in response to the threat, claiming that…
…well…
…there are some very strange twists to this one, folks…
It certainly looks that way. As usual, immagic has what little court documentation is publicly available. The defendant, by the way, appears to be the company that owns Turnitin.
We know very, very little at this point. Stay tuned.
This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.
Blackboard’s Second Quarter financial reports and conference call (edited mp3 audio) may say more about eLearning in higher education than it did about Blackboard. And they say a lot about Blackboard. There are hints of increased outsourcing of eLearning, expansion of an academic “suite” of integrated applications, and an Outcomes System to encourage public support of higher education based on accountability.
