On the one hand, Thomson Reuters’ lawsuit against Zotero has been dismissed. Details are scant at this point. We don’t yet know the grounds for dismissal or whether Thomson Reuters will pursue other legal action. On the other hand, the U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate whether Desire2Learn is violating trade laws with […]
Desire2Learn
Anti-trust: Curiouser and Curiouser
Here’s the chronology for the Blackboard anti-trust investigation as far as we know so far: May 14th: The U.S. Department of Justice contacts Desire2Learn and informs them that they are investigating the merger. May 22nd: According to their subsequent legal filing, Blackboard “received a voluntary request for information” from DoJ. May 26th: Desire2Learn goes public […]
EduPatent Updates
As others have already noted, Desire2Learn has updated their patent info blog with a smorgasbord of new information. (Frustratingly, the posts on the blogs don’t seem to have permalinks. Except when they do. Ugh.) Anyway, you can go to their blog and look at the April 29th entry for the details, but here are the […]
Blackboard Files Patent Infringement Suit Against Desire2Learn in Canada
Once again, Jeff Bohrer gets the scoop. (Add this guy to your feed reader, for sure.) Blackboard has apparently been issued a Canadian patent comparable to its US patent and is suing D2L in Canada. As Jeff puts it, To summarize, here are the active proceedings in this complicated story listed in chronological order: – […]
Yet Another EduPatent Suit
Jeff Boerer has a good find on this. It looks like Blackboard has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission aleging that Desire2Learn is illegally importing software into the United States that violates a U.S. patent. I don’t know anything more than what Jeff has posted, so I recommend you go to his […]
EduPatent Fight As Complicated As Ever
As you might imagine, Blackboard and Desire2Learn have somewhat different interpretations of what the recent USPTO ruling means in the bigger picture. And there certainly is plenty of room for interpretation, given the complexity of the situation. There are now no less than three separate, parallel, but not entirely unrelated fronts in the legal war […]
Blackboard Patent Invalidated. Again.
Update: Turns out I was incorrect about the relationship between the old patent and the new one. The ruling may (or may not) have some influence on the suit over the new patent, but it is not determinative. This is getting very complicated. I’ll try to get a post up about at least some of […]