This just in from the D2L patent blog: On August 4, we announced that Magistrate Judge Hines had issued his Memorandum Opinion Construing Claim Terms of the United States Patent No. 6,988,138 (the “Markman” decision). We noted that the decision was subject to procedural appeal. The decision rendered claims 1-35 invalid. On August 22, we […]
Desire2Learn
On Edupatents, Corporate Branding, and Putting Words in People's Mouths
There’s a write-up of the edupatent flap in eSchool News. It provides a reasonably good summary of the basic history, as far as these types of stories tend to go, and also gives a high-level account of the current state of the legal battle. (Short version: It’s dragging on.) All in all, it’s a useful […]
First 35 Claims of Blackboard's Patent Ruled Invalid
According to D2L’s patent blog, the judge in the patent case just ruled the first 35 of the 44 claims in Blackboard’s current patent invalid: The more significant, immediate result is that the Court found the “Means for assigning a level of access to and control of each data file based on a user of […]
Desire2Learn and Blackboard Technology Tutorials for the Patent Case
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 […]
More on the Supreme Court Ruling
Patently-O has up a PDF of the KSR v Teleflex ruling (which, by the way, was unanimous). Basically, the court says that, while the original precedents provide adequate guidance for obviousness, the Federal Circuit has interpreted that guidance too narrowly, arguing that “Rigid preventative rules that deny recourse to common sense are neither necessary under, […]
Supreme Court Strikes a Major Blow for Patent Reform
This is huge. Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of KSR v. Teleflex, where the central issue was the meaning of “obviousness.” The reason that the word is important in patent law is because an innovation that is deemed “obvious” is not patentable. For example, Teleflex had combined two existing devices for […]
Blackboard Inter Partes Determination Published
You can find the documentation here. The USPTO found 13 of Desire2Learn’s 14 claims to raise substantial new questions of patentability. However, the government did not a preliminary finding, as is usual with an Inter Partes challenge, because they are considering whether this challenge should be merged with the Ex Parte challenge filed by the […]