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E-Learning Company Blackboard Bows To The Growing Power Of Openness Again

Glyn Moody — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:46:40 PDT

The last time Techdirt wrote about the learning company, Blackboard, was in the context of its attempt to enforce a ridiculously broad patent on the field. Even before the patent was thrown out completely, Blackboard made an unusual move: it offered to exempt open source projects and those who contributed to them from its patent attacks:

As part of the Pledge, Blackboard promises never to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives, commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications. Blackboard is also extending its pledge to many specifically identified open source initiatives within the course management system space whether or not they may include proprietary elements within their applications, such as Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elgg and Bodington.

Commitments to limit potential patent protection are uncommon, particularly for enterprise software companies. The Patent Pledge -- in terms of its sweeping scope, strong commitment and public nature -- is unprecedented for a product company such as Blackboard.

That "unprecedented" commitment was a reflection of the power and popularity of the open source options, and the recognition by Blackboard that suing these free projects would lose it a lot of friends in the academic world. Here's another manifestation of that power, announced last week: Blackboard Inc. today announced a series of new initiatives to provide greater support for open education efforts. Working with Creative Commons, Blackboard will now support publishing, sharing and consumption of open educational resources (OER) across its platforms. The company also updated its policy confirming the ability for education institutions to serve non-traditional users with Blackboard Learn� without incurring additional license costs.

Support for OER enables instructors to publish and share their courses under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) so that anyone can easily preview and download the course content in Blackboard and Common Cartridge formats. The new functionality is available now for CourseSites, Blackboard’s free, fully-hosted and supported cloud offering launched a year ago and now used by over 18,000 instructors from nearly 12,000 institutions in 113 countries. Similar support for OER will be available soon for Blackboard Learn.

Blackboard also clarified its license policy to formalize the ability for education institutions to extend course access in the Blackboard Learn platform – as well as ANGEL and WebCT – to non-traditional, non-revenue generating students at no additional cost. The move supports engaging wider use of the platform to serve different types of “guest” users taking part in efforts including open teaching initiatives, auditing and accreditation activities, student recruiting programs, community outreach programs and collaborative research efforts.
The first part of this announcement is about open formats. Blackboard users can now share courses using the liberal Creative Commons license CC-BY, or the Common Cartridge standard. The second part is a classic play by a proprietary vendor trying to stop users moving to open source solutions by offering zero-cost options for certain classes of use – in this case, "non-traditional, non-revenue generating students". Both are testimony to the continuing shift to openness in education, and the rise of key open source e-learning programs like Moodle and Sakai.

Although Blackboard's announcements are welcome, particularly its support for the CC license, they are unlikely to halt that trend. That's because moves to truly open formats and open source are not just about cost, but also about freedom from lock-in and the ability to adapt solutions to local needs – something that Blackboard's proprietary approach does not allow. The only way the company can counter those strengths is by going totally open itself.

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Court Strikes Down Blackboard E-Learning Patent

Mike Masnick — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:16:00 PDT

You may recall that Blackboard, an e-learning company, got itself a patent a while back that seemed to cover pretty much all e-learning -- and then went about suing others. After a lot of controversy, the company agreed not to sue open source e-learning companies, but everyone else was fair game. The only problem? The patent was almost certainly ridiculous, and numerous thorough breakdowns of the patent raised serious questions about how it ever was approved in the first place. But, of course, the process of invalidating a patent is notoriously slow, and a company can cause lots of trouble in the meantime. In Blackboard's case, it went after competitor Desire2Learn.

Even as the Patent Office realized it needed to rethink the patent, the lawsuit moved forward, with Blackboard scoring a win. Of course, just weeks later, the USPTO gave an initial rejection of the patent. The original court ruling was (of course) appealed (separate from the USPTO ruling), and the good news is that the appeals court has dumped the entire patent. Only took a few years and millions of dollars wasted in legal fees for Desire2Learn. Too bad such money couldn't have gone towards actually improving e-learning. In the meantime, why doesn't anyone ask how such a patent got approved in the first place?

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Patent Office Rejects Blackboard E-Learning Patent One Month After It Wins Lawsuit

Mike Masnick — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:29:00 PDT

One of the more annoying things in patent lawsuits is watching the USPTO reject patents soon after a lawsuit concludes -- and having the judges in those lawsuits refuse to wait for the USPTO to weigh in. This is especially troublesome considering that so many patent re-exams result in rejected claims. It would only make sense for judges to wait until the Patent Office has had a chance to review the patent. As if to highlight that, late last week, the USPTO rejected all claims on a rather infamous "e-learning" patent held by Blackboard Inc. This comes just slightly over a month after Blackboard won a lawsuit using that very patent. It was known during the trial that the Patent Office had agreed to review it, but apparently, the judge didn't want to wait.

Of course, Blackboard quickly came out with a statement saying this doesn't matter, it's already won the case, and it still expects an injunction to be issued preventing Desire2Learn from offering e-learning software. Blackboard is correct that this is just an initial rejection (meaning there are still responses and additional rounds to go), but it still seems rather weak to put out a statement saying that everyone should just ignore the rather significant questions the USPTO has just raised about the patent in question.

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Blackboard Wins Lawsuit Over E-Learning Patent

Mike Masnick — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:11:00 PST

Blackboard is a distance learning company that claims to hold patents on the concept of distance learning. It wasted little time in suing competitors even as a close examination of the patent showed that it wasn't just obvious, but there was plenty of prior art on it. A formal challenge to the patent was launched, and the Patent Office agreed to review the patent over a year ago, but has yet to do much on that re-exam. However, while everyone waits for that, the lawsuit went forward, and a jury has decided that the patent is valid and the company Desire2Learn owes Blackboard $3 million (found via Troll Tracker). There will be an appeal of course, and maybe one of these days someone at the Patent Office will realize that it issued a patent on something rather obvious with a ton of prior art.

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