Blackboard Patent to Be Re-examined

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2007/01/29

Since I’ve weighed in on this issue before, I wanted to note — word has come via Harold and Chris of a Slashdot report that:

“Groklaw is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has just ordered a re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc, thanks to a filing by the Software Freedom Law Center. SFLC’s press release states, ‘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…’ The SFLC explains that though such re-examinations may take a couple of years to complete, approximately ‘70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.’”


ArtRage sketches on zooomr

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/09/17

Whoops — posted this to the wrong blog — you can find this post on my personal blog if you are interested.



If Hell froze over yesterday, does that make Microsoft or Palm Satan?

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2005/09/27

When I saw the images on engadget last Friday of a Treo running Windows Mobile, my first reaction was – this is September, not April 1. Got the same reaction when I told Steve Kaiser, one of the smartest Microsoft developers (and nicest guys) I’ve ever met.

A couple of seconds later, I changed my mind and decided this was real and that hell had indeed frozen over.

Recalling what I noted on Sparkle a couple of weeks ago along with the re-org Microsoft announced last week, it was instantly clear to me that the sleeping Redmond giant was waking up.

What better way to deal with having –

  • …your hardware ass kicked by Palm,
  • …your mobile device development ass kicked by Macromedia
  • …your integrated mobile office ass kicked by Blackberry

Than to just say – we lost – next. The smartest people I know are the quickest to say, we should stop doing this and go a different direction because things have changed.

While I watched the press conference yesterday AM I thought to myself, is there a clone of me writing press releases for this project?



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