D2L has posted the Flash-based technology tutorials that both sides prepared for the court (for viewing by the Judge? The Jury?). The presentations are intended to give summaries of their arguments and evidence in relatively non-technical terms and with a minimum of legal jargon as well. Finally, we have clear statements on what each side thinks the patent means. I hope that decision-makers in universities will take the opportunity to review these arguments and make their own evaluations regarding the merits of the patent and its prosecution.
D2L’s is here and Blackboard’s is here. However, D2L warns,
Note that the Blackboard tutorial was not designed to run on the web, and lacks a preloader. Please be patient until the initial file is loaded (15-30 seconds or more, depending on your connection speed). For similar reasons, the audio file may be inconsistent. Although Desire2Learn obtained permission to post the file, we do not have the source files to correct the situation. Our apologies for any inconvenience.
Thanks to Seb Schmoller and other friends for alerting me to this.
It is unfortunate about the BB video; try as I might I couldn’t get any audio, and the slides did not seem to advance automatically so I am unsure how much of their presentation I actually saw. While a patent based on *any* sort of RBAC in regards to CMS still seems, well, patently obvious to begin with, if, as D2L asserts, this case hinges on the assertion of "predetermined roles with predefined characteristics" then hopefully the judge will get what many of us got when we first saw D2L hit the market; that at the time it represented a step forward from both Blackboard and WebCT precisely because it did not dictate predetermined roles but instead allowed the administrator to fashion new ones on a tool by tool and function by function basis. I remember seeing this very clearly when I first reviewed D2L in early 2002 and thinking, wow, this isn’t just some jerry-rigged PERL code, these guys have built a sophisticated user and permissions model from the ground up.
On the subject of the Bb video, try hitting the "Go Back 5 Seconds" button to get the audio to start.
As you point out, D2L is claiming both that the patent isn’t valid and that, even if it is, they don’t infringe. This is a pretty typical argument. The Markman hearing, which these presentations were designed to prepare for, will determine the scope of the patent. If the judge decides that the patent only covers systems with pre-defined roles then D2L has a stronger case for non-infringement.
Why are BB having so much grief with their presentation? In the right hands doing this in Flash is not hard.if it were me I’d actually outsource making the presentation, just to get it 100% right. There’s a lot at stake here.Are BB too cheap to do so? rely on inhouse Flash skills that are clearly not quite there yet?
According to D2L’s warning, Blackboard’s presentation was provided to the court on CD-ROM and is optimized for that delivery mode. Blackboard gave D2L permission to post the presentation for general viewing on the web but did not create it for that purpose and did not assist D2L in optimizing it for that purpose. As a result, it plays poorly on the web.
Whether Blackboard is smart to let the public presentation of their case be marred by a poor viewing experience is another question.