All lawsuits have been dropped by both sides. The companies will cross-license each others’ patent portfolios under undisclosed terms, which gives both companies an opportunity to save face. After three and a half years, higher education can move on. Left unresolved is the larger question of the role of patents in higher education, but that […]
Desire2Learn
IMS Learning Information Services: The State of the Union
Regular e-Literate readers know that I am a big booster of the IMS Learning Information Services specification. (For an overview of the basics of the specification, see my posts here, here, and here.) There has been a lot of news recently about adoption, and I thought it would be worthwhile to pull together a unified […]
Desire2Learn Delivers IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (BLTI) Support
In other IMS news, Desire2Learn has announced that they are the first LMS provider to support BLTI, a specification designed to support plugging third-party tools into an LMS. According to the press release, here’s what’s included: Management interfaces to define integrations to external learning tools (Tool Providers) and to create links New Quicklink type to […]
Blackboard Owes Desire2Learn Over Three Million Dollars
I’m a little late on this one, but late last week the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Blackboard’s rehearing petition. Their only recourse now would be to appeal to the United States Supreme Court and hope that the court miraculously decides to hear their case. As a result, Blackboard will have to return roughly $3.3 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]