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Exclusive Interview
Desire2Learn CEO Makes Case Against Blackboard Patent, Court Ruling
A conversation with Desire2Learn's John Baker and Diane Lank
3/17/2008
Blackboard has since pledged non-assertion of its patent against open-source developers but would not relinquish its patent and said it would target commercial developers.
Blackboard v. Desire2Learn
Meanwhile, Blackboard's case against Desire2Learn went on. In February, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas awarded Blackboard $3.1 million from Desire2Learn for patent infringement (considerably less than what was sought) and refused to invalidate Blackboard's patent. Last week, the court enjoined Desire2Learn from selling its Desire2Learn Learning Environment 8.2.2 or earlier in the United States, giving the company 60 days to comply. Soon after, Desire2Learn released Learning Environment 8.3 as a "workaround candidate." The company also released a new version of its Learning Repository and also rolled out Desire2Learn ePortfolio on the same day.
Desire2Learn's next moves include seeking approval for the release candidate from Blackboard (voluntarily), filing motions in court, and, failing the success of those motions, filing for appeal.
The Blackboard patent saga is far from over.
David Nagel: Right after the injunction, your immediate response was to come out with a new version of the Learning Environment that isn't subject to the injunction. Is it required for all of your clients to upgrade?
John Baker: It's not a requirement for all of our clients to upgrade. The key here is that we never thought any of our technology was infringing. However, what we are asking our clients to do is make the transition to our 8.3 version as soon as they possibly can.
Nagel: What happens if they don't upgrade?
Baker: Now, this is only for what we believe to be self-hosted U.S. clients, which is a small number of our actual total number of clients. Many of our clients in the [United States] use our hosting facilities, which we believe are outside of the [scope of the injunction].
Nagel: For the self-hosted customers, what happens if they don't upgrade? Does that mean that you're paying royalties on that, or is something else implied?
Baker: That's our assumption from both what we understand of Blackboard's perspective as well as ours. We've never talked about an injunction against existing clients or any of our clients. All Blackboard's ever said that they've been seeking is a reasonable royalty for the ongoing use. We're trying to make sure we minimize that by having clients upgrade as soon as they can.
Nagel: When the clients do upgrade, what changes for them?
Baker: Key with the 8.3 release is that it's not just a workaround. There's been about two years of research and development that's gone into it. This is probably going to be the highest-quality release we've ever done. It's had six months of [quality assurance] because we've been waiting for the trial to wrap up before releasing it.
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