Wonderful news this morning...

On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s claims. We caution that this is a NON-final action; both Blackboard and Desire2Learn will have an opportunity to comment before a final action will issue, and after that, the decision will be subject to appeals.

I spent this past week at the OSBC conference in San Francisco where intellectual property issues and discussions about Microsoft's patent position relative to their relationship with the open source community were hot topics. This news is a great step forward for the education community and for the world of software patents in general. Thanks to the SFLC and to the education community for all the thoughtful responses and documentation that have helped the USPTO come to this initial determination.