A while back, I wrote a post giving advice to small schools about selecting a new LMS. That post turned out to be reasonably popular. Today somebody sent me a link to a study done by the North Carolina Community College System comparing Blackboard to Moodle and, in particular, talking about the experience of some […]
Blackboard-Inc.
Blackboard Files Yet Another Lawsuit
photo credit: michelle.irish You may recall that Blackboard purchased a patent in what appeared to be a fruitless attempt to countersue TechRadium, the company that sued them for patent infringement over their emergency warning system and that now is suing Twitter. It turns out that the purchase was not quite fruitless after all, because Blackboard used it […]
Trying To Follow Blackboard v Desire2Learn
There’s a blog post update from Desire2Learn on the latest back and forth between them and Blackboard over the patents. (Remember, there’s more than one patent now.) Here’s the latest, as near as I can follow it: On the original ‘138 patent suit in U.S. courts, there’s no word yet on any appeal by Blackboard […]
Blackboard Settles with TechRadium
Update: It turns out that TechRadium has also filed suit against Twitter. Oy. (Via Laura Gekeler.) Blackboard and TechRadium have apparently come to some sort of cross-licensing agreement on their emergency notification patents. This isn’t surprising. What we don’t know is whether anyone is paying anyone else as part of the cross-licensing agreement. Since Blackboard […]
The Financial Impact of the Patent Loss on Blackboard
You may recall that Blackboard originally won a judgment of $3.3 million from Desire2Learn in their lawsuit. The ruling from the Court of Appeals means that Blackboar will probably have to return that money—plus interest—to Desire2Learn, as Blackboard indicates in an 8-K SEC filing today. The filing says, in part, that Blackboard “expects to record […]
Another Victory for D2L, Another Opportunity for Blackboard
Update: Patently-O blogger Dennis Crouch has posted a legal analysis of the ruling in which he concludes, “Defendant Desire2Learn wins a complete victory (after a few million in attorney fees).” Via Desire2Learn’s patent blog, we learn today that the U.S. Court of Appeals re-affirmed the invalidation of claims 1-35 and newly invalidated claims 36-38 of […]
Blackboard Learn President Ray Henderson Starts a Blog
This is good news. Former ANGELista and current Blackboard Learn President Ray Henderson has started a blog, where he says he will respond to conversations in the blogosphere and generally try to make Blackboard more transparent. He has also turned blog comments on, which he acknowledges is a small deal in the wider world but […]