Campus Technology reports that all 44 of Blackboard’s LMS-related patent claims were rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office based on 10 issues raised in a reexamination request filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) in November, 2006.
Blackboard has two months to respond to the USPTO’s determination, and we can bet they will bankroll as big a response as possible. Surely their recent victory against Desire2Learn for patent infringement will fuel their strength of will to fight. For my part, Bb’s lawsuit leaves me wondering if allowing the lawsuit to stand trial while a USPTO reexamination request was under review was not just premature, but also extremely wasteful of our tax dollars and court time.
BlackBoard is already claiming that the ruling does not affect the current D2L lawsuit:
http://tinyurl.com/yo3mev
Blackboard states, “It has no effect on the validity of the patent, the lawsuit between Blackboard and Desire2Learn or the pending injunction against Desire2Learn.”
This statement is schizophrenic in the context of the USPTO’s reexamination, which rejected ALL 44 CLAIMS! The Software Freedom Law Center stated, “…the days that are going forward are not likely to change today’s result. This patent is dead.”
If the patent reexamination, which admittedly is non-final, does move forward as SFLO is concluding, the lawsuit WILL be overturned, and the injunction WILL be withdrawn.
Barry Dahl posted up a podcast with patent attorney on his blog: desire2blog.blogspot.com/2008/04/