Patent Office Orders Re-Examination of Blackboard Patent

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

       Patent Office Orders Re-Examination of Blackboard Patent

NEW YORK, January 25, 2007 -- In response to a formal request filed by
the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the United States Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO) today ordered re-examination of the
e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc.

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.

The patent in question, "Internet-based education support system and
methods" (U.S. 6988138), grants Blackboard a monopoly on most
educational software that differentiates between the roles of teacher
and student until the year 2022. In July, Blackboard filed a lawsuit
against Desire2Learn, a competing educational software maker, alleging
infringement of its e-learning patent.

Although Desire2Learn's software is not open source, the open source
and educational software communities responded with concern to the
possibility of an additional lawsuit that targets them.

"We filed this re-examination request to help free software developers
create and distribute their original software without having to fear
being sued over this patent, a patent that should never have been
awarded in the first place," said Richard Fontana, the SFLC attorney
who filed the re-examination request. "We are now a step closer to
keeping everyone safe from this 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.

Shortly after SFLC filed its request for re-examination, Desire2Learn
filed its own separate re-examination request. The USPTO has not yet
acted on that request.

About the Software Freedom Law Center

The Software Freedom Law Center -- chaired by Eben Moglen, one of the
world's leading experts on intellectual property law as applied to
software -- provides legal representation and other law-related
services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. The Law
Center is dedicated to assisting non-profit open source developers and
projects. For criteria on eligibility and to apply for assistance,
please contact the Law Center directly or visit the Web at
http://www.softwarefreedom.org.


Media contact:

Jim Garrison
Public Relations Coordinator
Software Freedom Law Center
+1-212-461-1910
garrison@softwarefreedom.org

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