August 2006
Monthly Archive
Just in case you were wondering …
Posted by Greg on 15 Aug 2006 | Tagged as: fun
As if there was any doubt … working with people who can pull off things like this is why I love working for Oregon State.
Creative, energetic, brilliant and fun. Bravo!
Blackboard patents the LMS?
Posted by Greg on 02 Aug 2006 | Tagged as: learning management systems, lms, planetosl
Thanks to krimsly for passing this little tidbit along: http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/blackboard_patents_the_lms
Err … wot? Almost every system I’ve built or run for the past decade probably violates that patent. I was running distance ed courses on a FirstClass server for the State of Oregon in 1994. Prior to that, we had been running a text menu-based system on EIES2 for several years before migrating to FirstClass. I think I saw a post somewhere once about a mainframe/terminal distance ed system back in the late 60’s. Their claim, filed in 1999, is (if you’ll pardon the pun) patently ridiculous. In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Matthew Small, senior vice president and general counsel for Blackboard stated:
He [Small] said many e-learning companies could operate without infringing on the patent, though he declined to provide any examples. However, he also said that had Blackboard not merged with WebCT, then WebCT would have been infringing the patent.
I am certainly not a lawyer, but couldn’t WebCT itself be considered “prior art”? The WebCT product was developed in 1995-1996 and the WebCT corporation was spun off from the University of British Columbia in 1997. Mr. Small’s own quote identifies a product that existed commercially two years before they filed for the patent.
Apparently the lawsuits started before the ink was even dry on the USPTO documents: http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/blackboard.pdf
Demanding a jury trial in rural east Texas for a software technology patent infringement lawsuit? Come on, now.
Slashdotted!
Posted by Greg on 02 Aug 2006 | Tagged as: planetosl
I know no press is bad press, but I have to say I am more than a little disconcerted and uncomfortable with being included in a /. snippet with luminaries like Greg Kroah-Hartman, Guido van Rossum, and Jeff Waugh. I try to do my small part in supporting the open source community, but my role is so infinitesimal compared to the others …
And could I possibly be worse on camera? Ugh! You know, there was a reason I studied the production side of broadcasting in college.
