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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
We also listened very carefully to the expert testimony at the trial, as well as the expert testimony that was presented in reports. Because we didn't know what Blackboard was accusing us of doing until that trial, we couldn't really change the application to address what they're accusing us of infringing. Now after the trial wrapped up within about a week or just a little bit over we were able to fully [address] all of the different elements that Blackboard was claiming were infringing the patent.
We used to ship our application with things like sample roles or default roles (depending on who was saying the terminology). We've eliminated those. In that sense, if you draw the analogy to a camera, instead of shipping a camera with some sample pictures on it, now we ship the Learning Environment without roles. And our clients can decide whatever roles they want to create. They can create them themselves. Which is interesting enough. During the trial we did the research, and none of our clients actually used any of the sample roles in the first place. They always made changes and modifications. And in fact we had one client that has 86 roles instead of the three samples we had actually sent.
Nagel: Okay, so that works out. As far as when they do upgrade, will anything about those roles that they've created themselves change, or will they just remain the same?
Baker: We don't know. It's really up to the client in terms of what they want to define as permissions [for the] different roles they create. We're not dictating what they should look like.
Nagel: What I'm saying is by default when they install the upgrade it's not going to wipe out any of the roles they've created?
Baker: We can't comment on that at this point. We're still waiting on legal wording around how to communicate around that....
Nagel: I see. Let's get back to 8.3 in a little bit. I wanted to talk about....
Baker: Maybe just to touch on that a little bit more. The new version that we're shipping to any new clients--and we have a number of new clients we hope to be shipping this to soon--will not come with roles, and the clients themselves can create them, and they can also import permissions. We have some great tools around managing roles and permission sets within our application. One of [the] bigger selling features is the fact that we have the ability for them to create as many roles as they want. So [you] can have homeroom teachers if you're in K-12; you can have parents. If you're in higher education, you can have coordinators, supervisors, librarians, registrars, guest lecturers. You can create as many roles as you want. We're not telling you what you want to create or what roles you implement in the system. But the system does allow the use of as many roles as the client wishes to create.
The key ... with new clients is they're going to come without; with existing clients it's going to be up them them in terms of how they manage their roles.
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