Campus Technology reports on a January 25th decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to review Blackboard’s CMS patent. Take your Dramamine(tm): Blackboard’s spin is as dizzying as ever. One choice example, as Blackboard general counsel Matthew Small explains how to tell if you’re infringing on Blackboard’s patent:
If you have a system of course-based instruction, a course-management system, and it enables a single user to have multiple roles across multiple courses, and that’s done in conjunction with a whole bunch of other types of functionality: If you have an application that does that, you might want to see if you fall within [the patent’s claims].
‘Nuff said.
The last gasps of a laboring giant, the days of closed source, vendor-driven innovation has come to an end. As Princess Leia says, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
No Grand Muff can survive in the coming republic, a global republic of knowledge (or knowers).