open...: Will the US PTO Ever Learn?

02 August 2006

Will the US PTO Ever Learn?

Blackboard has announced

it has been issued a U.S. patent for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods. The patent covers core technology relating to certain systems and methods involved in offering online education, including course management systems and enterprise e-Learning systems.

That's putting it mildly. If you waste your life reading the summary, kindly placed online in a reader-friendly format by Michael Feldstein, you will find to your utter gob-smacked amazement that Blackboard has essentially been granted a patent on the idea of logging on to a Web server and accessing pages that contain educational materials:

The user is provided with a web page comprising a plurality of course hyperlinks, each of the course hyperlinks associated with each course that the user has been enrolled either as an instructor or as a student. Selection of a course hyperlink will provide the user with a web page associated with the selected course; the web page having content hyperlinks and buttons to various content areas associated with the course.

It's about as broad and utterly ridiculous as granting a patent for the idea of accessing a Web page with a "plurality" of links on any particular subject. (I know, I know - somebody has probably applied for this too.)

Fortunately, the broader a patent, the easier it is to find prior art to drive a stake through its black(board) heart. And Moodle - an open source course management system, which is obviously seriously threatened by this idiotic US PTO decision - has compiled a wonderfully detailed history of online learning. It not only puts the boot into Blackboard's pathetic claims, but provides a useful resource in itself. It ends its long, long list of prior examples of online learning with the laconic: