Legal Issues: The Fences of a Patent
Information Today, Vol 26, No 2, p. 13, February 2009
3 Pages Posted: 11 Oct 2013
Date Written: February 1, 2009
Abstract
Now at the center of another patent fight is the Blackboard course-management software, in use at many colleges and universities. The software allows faculty members to post and organize course materials, generate discussion lists, and administer tests in a secure-online environment. Students can log into an institution’s Blackboard servers and arrange to access all of their courses from a single interface.
A patent issued to Blackboard in 2006 for its course management system is at the center of this latest patent fight. A dispute over the patent was raised by a Desire2Learn, Inc. (D2L), a competitor to Blackboard, after Blackboard sued D2L for patent infringement. In responding to the lawsuit, D2L claimed that several of Blackboard’s individual patent claims were invalid.
Keywords: patent, reexamination, BlackBoard, novel, non-obvious
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