Blackboard Invented Nothing!

... but of course, we already knew that. Now, the USPTO seems to have figured it out as well. Today they released their Action Closing Prosecution (nonfinal). decision (announced at D2L Patent blog)

Rather than write a long blog post, I'll share my initial thoughts (from Twitter) as I first heard about this and as I was reading the USPTO report (read from bottom up). Basically, the USPTO agrees that prior art renders the Blackboard patent baseless. However, we're still not done with this mess. What next? More Blackboard shenanigans, without any doubt.

Comments

Jeff Bohrer said…
I think of the dozen large U.S. universities (self-hosting D2L clients) that were forced to do a massive upgrade last year because of this issue of predetermined roles. What a waste of resources. Perhaps the next move would be a massive lawsuit against Bb from these institutions.
April 17, 2009 4:22 PM
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