Yesterday, Groklaw reported that the Software Freedom Law Center filed a reexamination request with the United States Patent Office.  The reexamination was filed on behalf of three open source learning management systems: Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor.  Blackboard has already sued one company, Desire2Learn, for patent infringement.  Back in October, Educause urged Blackboard to drop its patent.  The main problem that most see with the patent is that it claims to own the idea of e-learning. Many companies have come forward to say that they were doing much of what Blackboard claims it invented long before Blackboard existed. It will be a long time before this is all resolved, but it's something we in the education industry should be watching closely.

technorati tags:blackboard patent, education