A reader tipped me off that Desire2Learn now has its own blog up about the Blackboard lawsuit, and that the page contains supplemental legal documents that have not been made public before now. There’s a lot here to be read and analyzed. I haven’t had a chance to review them myself thoroughly yet because I didn’t want to wait on getting the info out to the rest of the community. At first blush, though, a few interesting things jump out:
- So far, I don’t see any evidence that the lion’s share of the prior art the community has documented was considered in the patent application. I emphasize that I have not thoroughly read all the documents yet and easily could have missed something.
- The patent was initially rejected by the examiner, who cited U.S. Patent #6,201,948, which appears to be a patent for some sort of intelligent tutoring system. Blackboard’s lawyers (correctly) responded by explaining that the patent cited by the examiner is not groupware for instructor-facilitated online learning and therefore is not really prior art. This is a good indication of the examiner’s lack of the specialized knowledge and experience required to properly identify prior art.
- There are a number of documents bookmarked within the PDFs that are called “Examiner’s Search Strategy and Results.” The meaning of these documents is opaque to me. It would help to have a patent lawyer explain them.
- There are lots of pictures of the Blackboard system at the time of the claim. This should be helpful in looking for specifics of prior art.
I look forward to learning more about the meaning of these documents from the more legally savvy members of the community.
