Back in February dominant VLE vendor Blackboardwon its patent infringement case against commercial rival Desire2Learn and were awarded $3.1 million in damages. Last week, however, it emerged that as a result of requests for re-examination by both Desire2Learn and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), all 44 claims of the Blackboard VLE patent have been provisionally rejected.
(the pdf of full judgement can be accessed on Desire2Learn’s site)
The claims were rejected both on the basis of prior art and of obviousness. Blackboard have two months to appeal the decision.
It is interesting to note that Blackboard tried to reassure the free and open source world that it had not intention of using its patent against them by (very unusually) issuing a patent non-enforcement pledge. Despite this the free and open source community, primarily through the intervention of the SFLC, has played a substantial role in opposition to the Blackboard patents.
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