Update: immagic has several more documents available (one, two, three, four) on what is apparently an outgrowth of a long-running conflict between iParadigms, the company that owns Turnitin, and Sciworth, the company that owns the Safe Assignment anti-plagiarism technology licensed by Blackboard. I haven’t read any of this documentation but am pointing you to it in the interest of getting as much raw data out to the community as possible.
More documentation is available. Apparently, Blackboard is not threatening Turnitin with a patent. Turnitin is threatening Blackboard with their patent. Blackboard is pro-actively filing suit in response to the threat, claiming that…
…well…
…there are some very strange twists to this one, folks…