about photos bookshelf portfolio blog home
Begin main content

Patent Office Orders Re-Examination of Blackboard Patent

Phew. At least the US patent system isn't totally broken. The re-examination was triggered by an official request of the Software Freedom Law Center:

SFLC, provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software, had filed the request in November on behalf of Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor, three open source educational software projects. The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent.

...

A re-examination of this type usually takes one or two years to complete. Roughly 70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.

Source: Groklaw

05:36 PM, 26 Jan 2007 by Mark Aufflick Permalink | Comments (0)

XML

Blog Categories

software (4)
  ..heads up 'tunes (4)

Notifications

Icon of Envelope Request notifications

Syndication Feed

XML

Recent Comments

  1. Mark Aufflick: all good ideas
  2. Unregistered Visitor: Excellent!
  3. Mark Aufflick: Hey thanks
  4. Unregistered Visitor: Fantastic entry
  5. Mark Aufflick: Bah - dashboard widgets
  6. Unregistered Visitor: Nice
  7. Mark Aufflick: elegant maths (as opposed to elegant rabbit)
  8. Unregistered Visitor: Does that really matter?
  9. Mark Aufflick: Inspiration
  10. Unregistered Visitor: Perhaps...