I was pretty amazed to find out Blackboard, a proprietary e-learning product company have been granted a patent:
“for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods”
What kind of crack monkey could even allow that through!
4 thoughts on “Blackboard – patenting e-learning”
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Based on a quick scan of
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=blackboard&s2=%22course+management%22&OS=blackboard+AND+
It would appear to me that they have sufficiently particular claims to be able to swat off some non-novelty accusations, but (not being a lawyer) I’m uneasy about their position with regards to the “inventive step” test. A mere agglomeration of components well understood by those skilled in the art to form a solution should not pass that test.
1 more drop in the ocean… the only hope is that it’s not defensible, the establishment of which requires extensive time by an engineer who understands how patents work doing patent searchs and consultation with laywers.
Point and laugh. Just point and laugh.
They installed those in over half of the classrooms at college here in Canberra and thus far teachers have accidentally mistaken them for ordinary whiteboards by writing on them (which is not the thing to do, but I don;t care). Teachers, I’ve found, aren’t usually very technology savvy, so most don’t use the boards.
Waste of money, and yes, that is bloody ridiculous.
Just sent them an email to get a response from them in regards to this. They claim I shall get a response in one business day.