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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
What's interesting is we actually think that by all of our clients moving to 8.3, it'll actually result in us having to support less versions of our application. Instead of being like Blackboard, where they're probably supporting about 20 different versions of the application, at tremendous cost, we're going to be supporting one, which will probably shave millions off of our costs [which will be applied to] new projects, new technology. We're going to better support our existing clients. Or to focus our energy on the next version, the 8.4 version, or the 9.0. So we're actually quite excited. We're actually trying to find the silver lining in this and put ourselves in a better position than we were [in at the start of this]. Now, it's not what we wanted to go through, but we can afford to pay it.
And then, what might happen is that if we lose on appeal, there's nothing else we have to pay. We've got that workaround put in place. So that one-time cost for us is something that we can absorb. Some of the things we're going to be asking the judge to do is to reduce that as well, if he doesn't eliminate it altogether.
That's from a financial perspective. From the industry side of things, we can't lose. We have to--we have to--win here. Otherwise it puts all of our other competitors in jeopardy. If we lose, Blackboard's patent becomes stronger. Their stated intent [is] to go after others. That's why they were seeking the injunction ... to allow them to go after others and seek royalties or injunctions against them. And we don't want to let that happen.
We're in a very fortunate position to be probably No. 2 behind Blackboard in the marketplace, and we've got enough financial strength to continue this fight. And we need to because there are a lot of very small [organizations] that are just not capable, programs that are just getting started. There's a lot of individual institutions that don't have the protection of the vendor in front of them. And we don't want to let Blackboard go after any of the institutions or any of the other players in this space.
What we're hoping is that other competitors of ours or others in the industry will continue to help us fight Blackboard in what is a very important patent battle. We really don't believe that patents are bad. It's something that comes up a lot. We don't think patents are bad. We actually respect intellectual property. We create our own intellectual property, and we hope others will respect ours.
But what we do have a lot of lack of respect for is a company that is trying to enforce what is an incredibly bad patent just to contain and control the marketplace so that they can build a monopoly. Blackboard's representative at that trial said with a straight face that if [Desire2Learn] weren't here, [Blackboard] would have the entire market. They have 90 percent market share, and [Blackboard] would get the other 10 percent if Desire2Learn weren't here. That's what they were saying at trial. We don't want to allow Blackboard to have a monopoly because you know what happens with monopolies. One thing that they've been trying to do is raise pricing on clients and to control the marketplace.
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