Michael Feldstein (of SUNY) has posted a plain English version of the
claims made in the Blackboard patent see http://tinyurl.com/rureh for the
pdf file.
While, as Becta have pointed out, the patent does not affect work in the UK
as no UK or EU patent has been granted (EU software patents being pending
awaiting a decision on whether software can be patented), it will affect
many of the products that we use which are developed or used in countries
so affected.
The patent appears to be extremely wide including such things as:
claim 2: An instructor can create and edit pages in a course space.
claim 3: Courses have an announcements page where announcements can be
created and edited by the instructor.
claim 25: Your login enables you to get access to all of your courses.
There is now a considerable amount of information at http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments which lists
products and when they were developed, but it is hard to map this to the
claims.
Does anyone think that it is worth putting the patent (together with the
plain English version) up somewhere and asking people to respond with prior
art against each of the claims in the patent?
regards
Tom.
Tom Franklin
Franklin Consulting
9 Redclyffe Road
Withington
Manchester
M20 3JR
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 0161 434 3454
mobile: 07989 948 221
web: http://www.franklin-consulting.co.uk/
blog: http://tomfranklin.blogspot.com/
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