Academic Computing Services Blog

Yesterday's news brought several interesting patent announcements. Blackboard has been awarded a patent for a "Learning Management System" [1, 2] and has instituted an infringment suit against Desire2Learn [3]; Friendster has been awarded a patent for social networking tools and is hoping that it helps built their market share - no law suits have been announced. [4,5]

The abstract of the Blackboard patent [6] announces:

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.

The abstract is followed by 44 specific claims that cascade from the invention - mainly individual components of such a system. An accompanying diagram shows how the system is structured. [7]

The Firendster patent [8], makes 15 claims, primarily focused on their algorithms for searching and selecting "friends of a friend."

Early reactions are focusing on the patent claims, especially the documentation of "prior art." Both the Moodle and Wikipedia communities have created "history of learning sytems" charts. [9, 10]