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Patent Office Rejects Blackboard’s User Role Patent
By Richard Nantel | March 31, 2008
Back in February, a judge ruled in favor of Blackboard in a patent dispute case involving the concept of multiple user roles through a single log-in. The result was that Desire2Learn was found to have infringed on Blackboard’s patent rights and must pay damages of $3.1 million U.S.
The champagne must be flowing today in the offices of Desire2Learn because the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Blackboard’s patent. In covering this story, Campus Technology provides this quote by Desire2Learn’s CEO John Baker:
“We’re very pleased that the [USPTO] has rejected all 44 claims of Blackboard’s patent. It was nice to see that the prior art that we submitted to the [USPTO] was used and reviewed thoroughly by the looks of it. Multiple pieces of prior art were enough to reject all claims of the … patent.”
Blackboard is rejecting all of this, saying the patent still stands. Stay tuned for round three.
Topics: Learning management systems |
