Blackboard Wins Patent Suit Against Desire2Learn 186
edremy writes "Blackboard, the dominant learning management system (LMS) maker, has won its initial suit against Desire2Learn. Blackboard gets $3.1 million and can demand that Desire2Learn stop US sales. (We discussed Blackboard when the patent was issued in 2006) This blog provides background on the suit. Blackboard has been granted a patent that covers a single person having multiple roles in an LMS: for example, a TA might be a student in one class and an instructor in another. You wouldn't think something this obvious could even be patented, but so far it's been a very effective weapon for Blackboard, badly hurting Desire2Learn and generating a huge amount of worry for the few remaining commercial LMSs that Blackboard has not already bought, and open source solutions such as Moodle (Blackboard's pledge not to attack such providers notwithstanding)."
So Obviousness Really Doesn't Matter (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Blackboard sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As a blackboard victim/user..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I had no idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes... That's What America Needs... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course it is. It's a perfectly cromulent word.
Re:What is an LMS? (Score:1, Funny)
the bright side of things (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What is an LMS? (Score:1, Funny)
So, in addition to reading the title, you want us to read the summary, too?
Man, this is really going to test my attention span.
Re:As a blackboard victim/user..... (Score:5, Funny)
Except for the professors who actually listen to the students. In my brief time trying to use Blackboard as an instructor, I pretty much concluded that I would spend more time trying to make it behave than it would take me to write the damn thing from scratch, so I used it as little as humanly possible.
The only thing it did that I couldn't do trivially with my own web space was do online quizzes, and frankly, I could have hacked something together that would have been less painful for both teacher and students in a day or less... coding while drunk, while smoking crack, while a herd of midget pygmy women had their way with me, while watching Red Dwarf reruns, while being beaten ruthlessly by a psycho ex-girlfriend with a cat of nine tails, and while hanging upside down with a rope tied to my testicles... simultaneously....
Yes, it is really that bad. In fact, that description pretty much summarizes how it felt to use Blackboard from a teacher's perspective. If your teachers like it, I truly wonder about them. :-D
Re:egad (Score:2, Funny)