[Announcements] New Blackboard-D2L Patent Lawsuit

Thu Apr 9 23:08:24 PDT 2009

April 10, 2009

As you may have already read, Blackboard has filed a new lawsuit  
against Desire2Learn for patent infringement. This recent lawsuit is  
based on a patent that Blackboard was awarded in February  
(#7,493,396). This new patent is actually a revised version of the  
patent originally at issue (#6,988,138). The revision was a result of  
the patent re-examination process undertaken by the USPTO that was  
initiated by requests from the Software Freedom Law Center (on behalf  
of Sakai, Moodle and ATutor) and, separately, from Desire2Learn.

Blackboard has added the new patent to its patent pledge—their promise  
that they will not enforce these patents against open source software,  
including Sakai. They did this without any request from the Sakai  
Foundation and we appreciate the pro-active addition. However, as we  
stated in February 2007, the pledge does not go as far as we would  
have liked and the addition of the new patent does not change those  
misgivings.

The Sakai Foundation’s position on the legal action and the patent  
itself remains the same. We are concerned that this very broad patent,  
especially when litigated repeatedly, could stifle innovation in  
educational software. At a time when there is tremendous public  
pressure on the cost of education, we are also distressed to see  
another multi-million dollar installment of this patent distraction.  
We would like the higher education community to be able to make a  
choice of collaboration and learning software without fearing that  
their right to use such software will be terminated through the  
courts. We again urge the parties involved to find a definitive end to  
this distraction that has been harmful to the free expression of ideas  
and the development of tools for education.

Michael Korcuska
on behalf of the Sakai Foundation and its Board of Directors