Trend: A Patent Dilemma

Provoking a furious reaction in the educational technology community, Blackboard, an enterprise learning management system provider, unveiled a U.S. patent for 44 features of learning management systems (LMS) on July 26, 2006 (cf. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 2006), and almost immediately filed suit against a Canadian company, Desire2Learn, for patent infringement. In addition, Blackboard announced in its July press release, "patents corresponding with the U.S. patent have been issued in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore and are pending in the European Union, China, Japan, Canada, India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Brazil."