The USC Aiken Open Source Project

BlackBoard's Patent Challenged

From Newsforge.Net we learned last week that the Software Freedom Law Center has filed a court case challenging a 2006 patent awarded to Blackboard, Inc., a web based course management software (CMS) development company.

Blackboard is the course management system utilized systemwide by USC including USCA.

In July Blackboard used the patent as the basis of a patent infringement law suit it brought against a rival CMS developer, Desire2Learn.Com.

Several competing open source CMS projects are indirectly threatened by the patent case. That's why the SFLC has gotten involved. According to Eben Moglen, Executive Director of SFLC and Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University, "In a free society, there is no room for a monopoly on any part of the educational process."

National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation Science Friday Program addressed the issue of the damaged caused to scientific research caused by frivolous patents in a piece titled "Can Patents Prevent Scientific Progress?". You can listen online to this short program by pointing your web browser here.

For more information about the Blackboard patent case and other proprietary and open source CMS software projects, see the Blackboard Inc. entry at Wikipedia.