Blackboard Patent

Blackboard was recently awarded a patent covering Learning Management Systems (LMS) and has launched their first lawsuit against Desire2Learn - one of their only existing commercial competitors (since they purchased WebCT last year - their only significant competitor).

I'm no patent lawyer, but this whole thing smells really bad to me. There is a big difference between a copyright which protects your intellectual property (the expression of an idea) and a patent - which can protect the idea itself. The academic community should be very concerned about this action which is obviously intended to stifle competition and will (in my opinion) ultimately stifle innovation.

I have been a Blackboard administrator since 1999. I first saw Blackboard at CAUSE98 in Seattle when they were one of the small startup companies with a very small booth in the back. Overall I have been pleased with their product - I think it does the job well and despite a few bumps along the way I have been satisfied with the service we have received from them. However I have not seen anything groundbreaking or innovative that warrants a patent that would prohibit others from using the same idea. Did they invent a discussion board? Or delivering files through the web? Or online tests?

It's a good product, and virtually everyone I have dealt with at Blackboard has been great, but I think they have made a big mistake with this action. The higher education community is not a typical business market and will not react the same. This looks like a decision made by a lawyer, not a technologist or academic. There was already a movement away from commercial LMS toward open source (Moodle and Sakai) and I think this is just going to accelerate that process.

The academic blogosphere is pretty active about this, and I haven't seen anything positive about it. You can see the latest here. The president of Educause sent out a letter yesterday on this topic - you can read it here.