Tonight I listened in on the last in Blackboard’s series of Q&A webinars on their patent. To their credit, they let me ask all of my questions. Matthew Small even extended a personal invitation to me to call him with any follow-up questions. I was very happy with all of that. I was far less […]
Desire2Learn
Inside Baseball and the Blackboard Patent Fight
Correction: I have to apologize for sloppy reading. While my facts pulled from the NYT article are accurate, I should have spent a little more time reading the blog post that referred me to the article. Michael C. Smith, a lawyer in the district who was quoted in the article, believes that the claims are […]
Desire2Learn Strikes Back
Desire2Learn filed their response to Blackboard’s infringement suit, and they are coming out swinging. They’re claiming that the patent is invalid because Blackboard knowingly refrained from disclosing relevant prior art (including software they had purchased such as Prometheus and previous standards work done through the IMS). As I have discussed here before, Blackboard had an […]
Desire2Learn's Prior Art Needs
A source close to Desire2Learn sent me the following information regarding the information they need to gather for the patent suit: While anecdotal evidence, e-mails, links and electronic documents are all appreciated and helpful, the very best things are the lowest tech: hard copy users guides from June 1998 and earlier would be useful, especially […]
Why Desire2Learn CEO John Baker is Our Hero
While most folks paying attention to the Blackboard patent scandal have sympathy for Desire2Learn, I’m not sure how many people realize just how altruistic the company is being by fighting the patent. From a purely financial perspective, it is clearly in D2L’s interest to settle and pay a royalty, even though doing so would harm […]
The Blackboard Patent Crisis at Two and a Half Weeks
While marveling the events of the last several weeks, Jim Farmer suggested that it might be worthwhile to pause and reflect back on the sequence of events. I thought that was a good idea, so here it is. I don’t claim that it is any sense a definitive history. To the contrary, it’s just my […]
Desire2Learn Posts Supplemental Materials on Blackboard Patent and Lawsuit
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 […]