blackfate

There’s been a lot of conversation about getting to the specifics of Patent Law; unfortunately, nobody in the education community has been privileged enough to have access to a patent lawyer yet. However, this could be the next best thing. Thanks to my contacts at IP Australia, I have sourced the Online version [...]

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I recently spoke to Subba, a national patents examiner with IP Australia’s Oppositions Hearing & Legislation branch. He’s provided me with more detailed information on the Blackboard patent, applications, and how these may be legally challenged.
Patent application 2005203324 is a divisional application with a parent patent 780938 (granted and sealed). It was open for [...]

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It looks like Blackboard Inc. have been flexing their muscles in the courts for quite a while. Maybe we should have seen this coming…
http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-0811.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/weather.cgi?WeatherID=383

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An online group is being set up to help coordinate countermeasures against Blackboard’s patents, and coordinate support for any organisation against whom Blackboard attempts legal action.
The group is nominally known as WITE: the Society for the Welfare of Information Technology in Education. If you would like to join WITE, please request membership of this Wiki, [...]

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I’ve just spoken to IP Australia’s Customer Service helpline. I have to say, they were exceedingly friendly and helpful – excellent customer service – and provided me with some great information on heading off an e-learning fiasco in Australia.
While patents in Australia can’t be protested until they are granted (when there is a consideration [...]

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I have taken a particular interest in the application of Blackboard’s patent applications and patents in Australia, the home of a number of innovative LMS systems including the open source Moodle project.
IP Australia, the Australian Government’s intellectual property organisation, provides a handy patent search facility; a search for the applicant “Blackboard” revealed that 5 of [...]

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On the 26th July, 2006, Blackboard Inc, the organisation that owns the Learning Management System (LMS) products Blackboard and WebCT, announced it had successfully acquired a patent over many of the core functionalities of learning management systems worldwide, from a patent application filed in 1999. On the same day, it lodged civil proceedings against Desire2Learn, [...]

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