Fortnightly Mailing

Desire2Learn and Blackboard settle their patent dispute

[Updated 19 December]

Blackboard and Desire2Learn have settled their patent dispute, with details of the settlement undisclosed. Two anodyne quotes from John Baker and Michael Chasen are included in the media release that appears on both Desire2Learn's and Blackboard's web sites:

Chasen: "We are pleased to have resolved our differences with Desire2Learn. Bringing this matter to resolution is in the best interests of both of our organizations, our respective clients and the broader education community."

Baker: "We're pleased to enter this agreement, and believe it is in the best interests of the educational community. We will continue to focus our attention on our clients, as well as the development of our products and services."

There is more from John Baker on Desire2Learn's blog, and [19/12/2009 update] this 15 December 2009 piece in Campus Technology by Dave Nagel has a reasonably clear potted history. Meanwhile Ray Henderson, ex boss of Angel Learning (acquired by Blackboard earlier this year), and now a senior Blackboard executive, writes a long and carefully crafted post that gives some insights into what looks to have been Blackboard's welcome decision to change its stance somewhat. Excerpt:

"The LMS software category is the result of many things, including plenty of community collaboration over a period of many years. Blackboard both contributed to and benefited from this history just as every other commercial software company or commercial open source services firm does today. While many others had patented specific innovations, the first case played out in public was bound to precipitate a great deal of concern both about the specific patent and the controversial area of software patents generally. 

I’ve now had the benefit of reviewing the overall IP portfolio. To my eyes there are unique contributions in what I’ve seen. And so we face an important question: what business conduct best balances our various obligations and aligns with the values of the client community we serve?

Pondering the balance in this case, I came to the view that it was best for us to bring the matter with Desire2Learn to a close. This dialog has distracted attention from the many positive contributions to the industry that Blackboard has made and can continue to make."

Note. Here is a not very systematic list of other posts related to the Blackboard patent:

• 6 May 2009 - More rationalisation amongst e-learning businesses;
• 23 October 2008 - Blackboard vs Desire2Learn: what is the other side of the story?
• 31 May 2008 - Lucid summary of Blackboard's defence of its patent;
• 25 March 2008 - US Patent and Trademark Office merges re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138;
• 7 March 2008 - Follow-up links relating to Blackboard's successful patent infringment claim against Desire2Learn (updated 7 March);
• 27 February 2008 - Riina Vuorikari - Patents and e-learning do not make a good match - what’s “Blackboard Inc. vs. Desire2Learn” gotta do with the EU?;
• 9 February 2008 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn: Joint Final Pre-trial Order;
• 3 August 2007 - Blackboard Inc. v Desire2Learn - court issues order construing claim terms;
• 20 June 2007 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn - claim construction briefs filed;
• 1 February 2007 - Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge";
• 25 January 2007 - United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent;
• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination
  requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.

Note. Here is a not very systematic list of other posts related to the Blackboard patent:

• 6 May 2009 - More rationalisation amongst e-learning businesses;
• 23 October 2008 - Blackboard vs Desire2Learn: what is the other side of the story?
• 31 May 2008 - Lucid summary of Blackboard's defence of its patent;
• 25 March 2008 - US Patent and Trademark Office merges re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138;
• 7 March 2008 - Follow-up links relating to Blackboard's successful patent infringment claim against Desire2Learn (updated 7 March);
• 27 February 2008 - Riina Vuorikari - Patents and e-learning do not make a good match - what’s “Blackboard Inc. vs. Desire2Learn” gotta do with the EU?;
• 9 February 2008 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn: Joint Final Pre-trial Order;
• 3 August 2007 - Blackboard Inc. v Desire2Learn - court issues order construing claim terms;
• 20 June 2007 - Blackboard v Desire2Learn - claim construction briefs filed;
• 1 February 2007 - Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge";
• 25 January 2007 - United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent;
• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination
  requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.

The Digital Economy Bill's "copyright infringement provisions" - analysis by Frances Davey for the Open Rights Group

"The Bill's proposal goes far beyond what we have seen attempted in other countries such as France and New Zealand."

Via Martyn Bailey I found that the Open Rights Group has published a
fairly detailed assessment of the copyright infringement provisions of the Digital Economy Bill, by Frances Davey, a barrister who specialises in technology and media law.

Here is the "summary of the problems" from the piece:

• "The key question of who will be disconnected from the internet and for what reason is subject to no democratic control and requires no consultation to be made.

• Although the codes must be objectively justifiable, non-discriminatory, proportionate and transparent this most important question will be decided by order of the Secretary of State who is not required to be adhere to any principles of proportionality etc.

• Some decisions (such as whether there has been a copyright infringement) that affect individuals will not be subject to appeal; those that are may not have an adequate route of appeal.

• Many of the important details are left to codes of practice which will not be subject to sufficient parliamentary scrutiny - in some cases there need be no scrutiny at all.

• The Bill has an inflexible and stereotyped view of the way in which access to the internet is provided which ignores many useful and important business models: many business from Weatherspoons and McDondalds to the British Library and local community access projects will be affected and may have to cease to provide internet access."

Net piracy: 1. New Scientist piece by Paul Marks; 2. Critique of disconnection provisions by Liberty

Here are two interesting documents relating to so-called "net piracy".

The first is this plain English piece by Paul Marks in the 3/12/2009 New Scientist about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA, an international treaty) currently under discussion in the G8, and which internet service providers are getting increasingly anxious about. Here, for example, is a comment on ACTA by Andrew Heaney, a senior executive at TalkTalk, the third largest UK ISP:

"This is the kind of snooping you'd expect in China, not a modern western democracy. It raises huge questions over privacy invasion and freedom of expression."

The second is the the civil liberties campaign organisation Liberty's critique of the Digital Economy Bill's anti file-sharing measures [86 kB PDF], which it argues are disproportionate and liable to infringe citizens' human rights.  Long excerpt:

Young people's writing: Attitudes, behaviour and the role of technology - report from the National Literacy Trust

Thanks to Doug Gowan at the Open Learning Partnership for this link to the Executive Summary of the UK National Literacy Trust's report (by Christina Clark and George Dugdale): Young people's writing: Attitudes, behaviour and the role of technology [55 kB PDF]. The report echoes the US Pew studies on the role of ICT in the lives of young people. Some big snippets:

• 56% of young people said they had a profile on a social networking site, such as Bebo or Facebook. 24% said that they have their own blog. While frequently vilified in the media as ‘dumbing down’ young people’s literacy, this research shows that technology offers different writing opportunities for young people, which is seen in a link between blogging and (self-reported) writing ability and enjoyment of writing. For example, young people who write on a blog were much more likely than young people who do not write on a blog to enjoy writing in general (57% vs. 40%) and to enjoy writing for family/friends in particular (79% vs. 55%). Young people with a blog (61%) as well as young people with a profile on a social networking site (56%) also displayed greater confidence, believing themselves to be good writers. Blog owners and young people with a social networking profile were also more prolific writers than their counterparts. They held more positive attitudes towards writing and computer use, and viewed writers more favourably.
• Owning a mobile phone does not appear to alter young people’s enjoyment of writing, their writing behaviour or their attitudes towards writing.
• Most young people said they used computers regularly and believed that computers are beneficial to their writing, agreeing that a computer makes it easier for them to correct mistakes (89%) and allows them to present ideas clearly (76%). Overall, nearly 60% of young people also believe that computers allow them to be more creative, concentrate more and encourage them to write more often.
• The relationship between enjoyment of writing, writing behaviour, attitudes towardswriting and socio-economic status, assessed by proxy using free school meal (FSM) uptake as an indicator, is complex. Pupils who receive FSM in the present study were not more or less likely than their more privileged counterparts to enjoy writing or to write regularly. There was also no relationship between socio-economic background and enjoyment of writing, writing behaviour, linking writing to success, views of writers, computer use, or attitudes towards computers. However, pupils who do not receive FSMs rated themselves as better writers than pupils who receive FSMs.

In summary, this research provides us with an up-to-date insight into young people’s attitudes towards writing. Most young people write regularly and young people write technology-based materials, such as text and instant messages, most frequently. While owning a mobile phone does not appear to alter young people’s writing behaviour, having a profile on a social networking site or having a blog is connected to enjoyment of writing and confidence in writing. Young people today use computers regularly and believe that computers are beneficial to their
writing.

We believe it is paramount that the school curriculum reflects and utilises writing forms that young people enjoy and engage with, in order to demonstrate that writing is more than a compulsory task: it is an essential life skill.

"Into something rich and strange" - making sense of the sea-change: call for proposals for the 2010 ALT conference

Next year's Association for Learning Technology conference will be in Nottingham, England, between 7 and 9 September 2010. Keynote speakers will be Barbara Wasson, Sugata Mitra, and Donald Clark.

Last week ALT (for which I work part time) published the calls for papers and abstracts. Links to these are as follows:

• Call and Guidelines for Proceedings Papers [9 page 113 kB PDF file];
• Proceedings Paper Template [4 page 56 kB DOC file];
• Call and Guidelines for Short Papers, Posters, Symposia, Workshops and Demonstrations [10 page 59 kB PDF file].

The submission system will open in mid December, and will close on 15 February 2010.

Google Translate - new "live translating" interface. Stunning and transformational.

You must try the new version of Google Translate, which provides machine translation in real time (between over 50 language pairs) as well as the "old" capacity to translate a web site, a new document upload and translation feature, and, for translations into English, a "now hear it spoken" button.

The Google Blog has more.

I'm interested in whether users submit "better" translations, and if yes to what extent; and, spam permitting, whether such better translations are integrated into the body of data from the which the translator derives its output.

We must ..... a call to action to create the university of the future

Here are five tasks prioritised las month at a "create the university of the future" meeting sponsored by the Open University of Catalonia and the US based and led New Media Consortium, and attended by "forty leaders in open education and technology" Barcelona. Source [140 kB PDF], with thanks to Phil Candy.

Jaw-dropping: a talk about "lightweight learning" by Sugata Mitra at Google's London office

Source: Infonomia

Updated: added extra bullet-point from Sugata Mitra - 11/10/2009; dates clarified - 25/10/2009.

Last Monday I had the pleasure of hearing Sugata Mitra give a jaw-dropping talk about his "Hole in the wall experiments", at a 157 Group / Becta event at Google's London office that I had had a bit part in organising. (Becta is the UK Government's agency to promote and support the effective use of ICT in education, and singled out on Thursday 7 October by David Cameron, in his pre-election speech to the Conservative Party Conference. The 157 Group is a group of England's big and most successful further education colleges.)

Making money from free digital content - Cory Doctorow experiments

I've had a soft spot for Cory Doctorow because of his wonderful 2001 diatribe Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. With a Little Help is a print-on-demand book of short stories by Cory Doctorow that explores - in the manner of its publication - several different "freemium" models for turning a free, digital object into profitable and physical objects. Cory explains - in his column in Publishers Weekly, and on his blog.

Related: 7 May 2007 piece in Fortnightly Mailing.

All Party Communications Group comes down firmly against disconnection as a way to stop illegal filesharing

The UK "All Party Parliamentary Communications Group", chaired by John Robertson MP and Derek Wyatt MP, has just published the report of its recent inquiry “Can we keep our hands off the net?”. Exerpt:

"We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available."

"We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered."

The report covers a much wider range of issues, with a set of pragmatic recommendations relating to issue like: ISPs' role in preventing the spread of malware and spam, the need for minimum guaranteed speeds of broad band connections to be advertised, and for consistent default standards of child-protection filtering on mobile internet connections.

(With thanks to Steve Ryan for sending me a link to the report.)