Kitchener Newspaper Interview

I was interviewed (briefly) on Friday about the D2L-Blackboard case by a reporter from The Record in Kitchener, Ontario which is where D2L is headquartered. It wasn't a great conversation since I wasn't really prepared to answer the questions intelligently. (here's a PDF of the first page of the business section)

That becomes obvious when you see my one "quoted" passage in the article. Apparently this is what I said when asked about why we care whether Blackboard wins or not: "If Desire2Learn or anybody else is to lose a lawsuit like this, having an unfavourable judgment against them, we're not thinking it necessarily puts them out of business."

"But it will substantially raise their cost, because they'll have licence fees and so on, and we'll have more to pay to Desire2Learn. It will have an adverse effect to the industry just to Blackboard's benefit."

I did have a few other statements that were a bit more lucid than that, and I believe a bit more important as well, but they didn't get into the article. He asked about how Blackboard's actions are being viewed by those of us in higher ed. My answer basically dealt with how higher ed in general doesn't like being held hostage by corporate shenanigans, and in general doesn't like being locked into the constant efforts of companies like Blackboard to please their stockholders with constantly increasing profits.

This is how the article begins: "Everything Desire2Learn Inc. has built over the past nine years will soon be in the hands of 12 randomly selected people from an area where pro rodeo circuit stops outnumber sizable software companies two to zero."

"Unlike barbecues, taco places and Southern Baptist churches, the high-tech industry doesn't have much of a presence in Lufkin, Texas, where Blackboard Inc. has chosen to sue its Kitchener-based competitor for patent infringement."

"East Texas is, however, known for juries friendly to patent owners like Blackboard, which wants sales of Desire2Learn's education software banned in the U.S."

I think it is safe to say that the reporter has similar thoughts to mine that the jurors can be expected to be completely clueless about the development of VLE platforms over the years. However, the statement about banning sales in the U.S. is news to me. I thought that BlackCT was only after royalties (licensing fees) from D2L. Banning sales is a whole different ballgame. I'll try to get the word as to whether the article is correct or not in that regard.

CC Flickr photo by ReneS