Blackboard Patent: "I'm not touching you"
For the past year or so, the LSB has been developing a set of tools that allow students and faculty to describe learning outcomes and link them to classroom activities. We believe that this is an important step that would complete a collaborative learning environment that is a blend of traditional courseware tools and portfolio tools. As far as I know the idea (although simple in premise) has not yet been developed on other platforms. We have released the code with the Sakai Foundation educational community license. We think that this is an important idea that many institutions would be interested in using and further developing and we would welcome their participation.
In July Blackboard, Inc. announced that they had been granted a patent on the ideas behind courseware. They then sued another e-Learning company for infringing on their patent. Let's set aside the ongoing discussion about the legitamacy of the patent. My personal opinion is that I am pretty surprised that the US Patent Office would grant such a broad patent. Like many other home grown courseware solutions, our own Dialogue Project probably infringes all over that patent.
Although Blackboard's counsel claims that "There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what [the patent] represents and what it doesn’t represent" and that Blackboard doesn't want to attack open source, I can't help feeling like Blackboard has their finger one inch from our nose saying, "I'm not touching you...I'm not touching you."
Maybe you're not, but it is bugging me. Its bugging me because Syracuse needs to work in both worlds. Many faculty rely on Syracuse's production Blackboard installation(s) on campus. I had hoped for integration work between our Sakai/OSP pilot and Blackboard.
It is bugging me and others interested in doing this work. Its tough to ignore that finger. There it is, right between us and our work. I can't really ignore it.
Its an unwelcome wake up call. Do I now have to consider how to prevent someone in the future from planting a flag in community work and saying, "That's ours"? Is an open source license enough? or is a pre-emptive, defensive patent needed?