[A2k] : Patent battle over teaching tools

[Michelle Childs]

Patent battle over teaching tools Internet law professor Michael Geist on
a patent battle over the tools educators use to teach students.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4790485.stm >

Patent battle over teaching tools

Internet law professor Michael Geist says a patent row between educators
and the maker of educational software tools holds lessons for all net
users.

Many lecturers use online tools to teach students
A company spends years developing new technologies that leverage the power
of the internet. It develops a global following.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, it is hit with a patent infringement suit
by a U.S. company, instantly facing the prospect of years of costly
litigation in US courts. With limited resources, it must defend itself by
arguing that the patents are invalid.

This tale sounds like the well-known patent battle experienced by Research
in Motion, the company behind the popular Blackberry device.

In a case of legal deja vu, however, it now also describes the likely road
ahead for Desire2Learn, a Canadian company specialising in online
education tools known as learning management systems.

Tool toll

This is because Blackboard, an American maker of these systems, took the
academic community by surprise late last month when it announced it had
been granted a broad patent in the US covering 44 claims related to
learning management systems.

Blackboard became the largest company in this market when it merged with
Canadian-based WebCTin late 2005.

It added that it expects similar patents to be granted in nearly a dozen
locations around the world including the European Union, Canada, and
Australia.   Open source and internet tools are emerging as the first line
of defence


On the same day that it publicly disclosed its patent, Blackboard started
a patent infringement suit in a Texas court against Desire2Learn.

Both the patent and the lawsuit have generated enormous anger within the
academic and open source software communities.

For universities and colleges, learning management systems are an
essential part of the education experience as they provide access to group
discussion lists, interactive teaching lessons, and collaborative online
work spaces that take the learning experience outside the traditional
classroom.

Many educators have been working on these technologies for years, so the
claim that one single company now holds exclusive patent rights on widely
known applications that have been implemented into hundreds of learning
systems worldwide came as a shock.

For its part Blackboard claims that the patents only cover narrow
company-created innovations.

Shock quickly gave way to fear, since the community worried that
Blackboard would leverage the patent to force competitors into expensive
licensing agreements, thereby increasing costs and reducing innovation.

But there is no indication that this is in fact happening.


Classrooms and computers are becoming synonymous
Moreover, educators have expressed concern that the patent will create
confusion within the academic community, leading some institutions to drop
better learning management systems alternatives due to the legal
uncertainties.

Educators in the developing world are particularly uneasy, given that many
rely on distance education and the delivery of electronic course materials
as a primary, more cost-effective method of education.

Fighting back

The open source software community has also reacted with alarm, since
there are several ongoing open-source LMS projects that have gained
increasing popularity in recent months.

These projects, which include Moodle and Sakai, are freely available and
therefore represent a significant competitive threat to the proprietary
LMS vendors such as Blackboard and Desire2Learn.

Noting that Desire2Learn was the first legal target, open source
developers have wondered aloud whether they might be next.

Interestingly, open source and internet tools are emerging as the first
line of defence against the Blackboard patent and lawsuit. Angry educators
have launched an online petition calling on Blackboard to drop the lawsuit
and to agree to forego any future patent suits.

Several online collaborative work spaces known as wikis have also sprung
up to pool knowledge about the history of online learning environments.

That information could prove crucial in defending the case, since evidence
that the patent is not original (known as prior art) can be used to
counter its validity.

The No Education Patents wiki (noedupatents.org) is of particular interest
since it provides a plain-language explanation of all 44 claims contained
in the Blackboard patent and it invites the community to submit specific
examples of prior art.

The wiki is revealing as it illustrates how beneath the complexity of the
language used in patents, many of the claims relate to simple
functionality such as online chat rooms and exam submissions.

The patent system is designed to foster innovation by providing patent
holders with exclusive rights over their inventions for a limited time.

However, the Blackboard patent and Desire2Learn lawsuit is the latest
example of how a system that easily grants over-broad patents arguably
could be used to impede innovation and limit marketplace competition. It
is a tale that the technology community knows all too well.


Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce
Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.





--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
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