Here’s an interesting blog post I came across via zerokspot. Blackboard, a dominant player in the e-learning market, has been granted a patent on E-learning. This could threaten open source players like Moodle who provide e-learning platforms on the internet. Another example of how the US patent system is actually going around killing innovation!

On 26 July, Blackboard Inc, which last year took over WebCT, and is the dominant vendor of course management systems, announced that it has been granted a US patent “for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods”, and that patents corresponding to the US patent “have been issued or are pending all over the world including in the European Union, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, Hong Kong and Brazil”.

Link: Fortnightly Mailing: Blackboard’s US Patent 6988138 seems to cover most of the “commodity” features of a learning environment

Patent Abstract:
A system and methods for implementing education online by providing institutions with the means for allowing the creation of courses to be taken by students online, the courses including assignments, announcements, course materials, chat and whiteboard facilities, and the like, all of which are available to the students over a network such as the Internet. Various levels of functionality are provided through a three-tiered licensing program that suits the needs of the institution offering the program. In addition, an open platform system is provided such that anyone with access to the Internet can create, manage, and offer a course to anyone else with access to the Internet without the need for an affiliation with an institution, thus enabling the virtual classroom to extend worldwide.
Link to the Patent Document

via: http://zerokspot.com/node/714