publication date: Jan 31, 2007
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author/source: Richard Taylor
The US Patent Office has announced that it is re-examining US Patent 6988138, awarded to Blackboard Inc. in July last year for, ‘Internet-based education support systems and methods’. This gave Blackboard a monopoly until 2022 on any educational software that could differentiate between the roles of student and teacher.
As we reported in October, the granting of this patent would have had huge ramifications for e-learning internationally. The case against Blackboard was lodged by the US Software Freedom Law Centre, who were representing Saki, Moodle and ATutor on a pro bono basis. Things don’t look good for Blackboard with the Patent Office finding that prior art (all information that has been disclosed to the public in any form about an invention before a given date) raise ‘a substantial new question of patentability’ over all of the 44 claims in Blackboard's patent, lodged in 1999.
What triggered the backlash against Blackboard was their aggressive use of the patent in litigation against a major competitor, Desire2Learn. It will now take at least two years for the re-examination, and it is highly likely that Blackboard’s patent will be either revoked or significantly narrowed. This US decision will also impact on the related patents already granted in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Blackboard’s current EU patent application.
