Blackboard Trial Against Desire2Learn in Court

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 02/14/08

Just a week after higher education software maker Blackboard announced "tremendous" financial results for the year, it is finally facing off in a small-town Texas court against rival Desire2Learn in a patent dispute over e-learning software. Blackboard is seeking $17 million in lost revenue as well as an injunction against the company, which is based in Canada.

Immediately after receiving a patent on its course management system in 2006, the larger company filed suit against Desire2Learn, claiming patent infringement.

Many participants in the e-learning community charged that the patent award was overly broad and ignored previous offerings in the e-learning space. The response became so heated that Blackboard eventually issued a "legally binding" guarantee promising never to take legal action against participants in three open-source projects, Moodle, Sakai, and ATutor.

For its part, Desire2Learn has challenged the patent. But no decision has been made yet by the federal patent office on the validity of the original claim.

According to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education Blackboard president, Michael Chasen, reiterated that point on day one of the trial, stating that "his company had no intention of suing colleges that use open-source software to create their own course-management systems."

Desire2Learn has around 500 clients in the United States, compared with Blackboard's 2,400.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.

  • Abstract geometric shapes including hexagons, circles, and triangles in blue, silver, and white

    Google Launches Its Most Advanced AI Model Yet

    Google has introduced Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, a new artificial intelligence model designed to reason through problems before delivering answers, a shift that marks a major leap in AI capability, according to the company.

  • Training the Next Generation of Space Cybersecurity Experts

    CT asked Scott Shackelford, Indiana University professor of law and director of the Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance, about the possible emergence of space cybersecurity as a separate field that would support changing practices and foster future space cybersecurity leaders.

  • Two stylized glowing spheres with swirling particles and binary code are connected by light beams in a futuristic, gradient space

    New Boston-Based Research Center to Advance Quantum Computing with AI

    NVIDIA is establishing a research hub dedicated to advancing quantum computing through artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated computing technologies.