Serendipity35

Last Friday, a federal jury in Texas ruled in favor of Blackboard Inc., the leading provider in the U.S. of course/learning management software, in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Desire2Learn Inc.

It's a case that educational institutions have been interested as customers of Blackboard, or as customers of competing products, or even as users of an open source LMS, such as Moodle, because many fear that a win by Blackboard could stifle further innovation by other learning management systems.

Blackboard's suit came about in 2006. They asserted that the smaller rival Desire2Learn had infringed on a patent granted Blackboard that year, and so had taken away customers.

Desire2Learn, a Canadian company, claimed the patent was invalid because Blackboard was aware of similar technology (“prior art”) that existed before it submitted its patent filing.