Forum .LRN Q&A: Blackboard patent and lawsuite

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1: Blackboard patent and lawsuite
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 08/02/06 01:02 PM
Al Essa wrote in his weblog about the latest movements of Blackboard against open source E-Learning solutions, which is an interesting read for anyone wanting to use and/or sell .LRN.

http://tatler.typepad.com/nose/2006/08/how_blackboard_.html

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4: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 1)
Posted by Jun Yamog on 08/03/06 03:41 AM
Why is .lrn or ACES not in this wiki?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

Here is a history page on moodle

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Online_Learning_History

Moodle community is discussing it here:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=50597

Caroline,

Maybe you can add an entry for ACES and .lrn? Even it it does not predate WebCT atleast it puts .lrn on the wiki page :)

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5: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 1)
Posted by Torben Brosten on 08/03/06 07:06 AM
Is .lrn the predecessor of Sloanspace, as mentioned in this[1] annual report?

If so, would Sloanspace have any significance in this matter?

1. http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres02/10.00.html

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6: Re: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 5)
Posted by Torben Brosten on 08/03/06 07:07 AM
er.. wires crossed. Should read: Is Sloanspace the predecessor..?
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7: Re: Re: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 6)
Posted by Janine Ohmer on 08/03/06 07:16 AM
The first version of Sloanspace was based on ACES and was built by Caroline when she was working for Arsdigita. Sloan commissioned OpenForce to build dotLRN and port the existing Sloanspace content over to it.

As I posted on the wiki, I have an email from one of the managers who worked for Al at Sloan, dated 8/1/01, which starts out "I'm writing because OpenForce is ready to begin porting SloanSpace to ACS 4..." so I would put the birth date of dotLRN at very close to that date.

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8: Re: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 2)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 08/03/06 09:15 AM
After reading the patents (at least partially), I think one could challenge them easily on the grounds of prior art, though I have no clue how to do that. Even ACES predates most of the filling date of the patents, not to mention that most extensions of the patents have been working in .LRN before the patent has been filed.
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9: Re: Re: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 8)
Posted by Daniël Mantione on 08/03/06 02:30 PM
Well, EP1664992 hasn't been granted yet and should be in prior art research procedure. I don't wether it is possible to appeal it.
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10: Re: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 4)
Posted by Venkatesh Goteti on 08/12/06 05:38 PM
Few days ago, I added information of aD work of ACES and .LRN to the Wikipedia. You will find it under 2000. I put it there as I was only able to find aD press-releases about ACES dating to this period (On www.archive.org). If any of you are aware of it (ACES) having been deployed earlier, you can correct it there. Here is the text I added there:

* May, 2000: ArsDigita, a Boston Massachusetts based start-up who developed the Arsdigita Community System since their inception in 1997 deploys Caltech Portals at my.caltech.edu [http://web.archive.org/web/20000530235506/http://my.caltech.edu]. Later that year in October 2000, deploy the ArsDigita Community Education System (ACES) at MIT Sloan School. The system is called Sloanspace [http://web.archive.org/web/20010424194535/www.arsdigita.com/news/item?news_item_id=101440]. The ArsDigita Community System as well as ACES in the next few years grow to [http://www.openacs.org|OpenACS] and [http://www.dotlrn.org|dotLRN]

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11: Re: Blackboard patent and lawsuite (response to 1)
Posted by Alfred Essa on 08/15/06 08:07 PM
I submitted prior art info to desire2learn based on philip's work going back to 1997.