BlackBoard Patent

Here is a plain English version of BB's 44 claims by Michael Feldstein. It seems to me that ALL LMS will be infringing BB's patent.

As Michael Feldstein put it

What we need to do is find either existing LMS’s that were publicly known or articles that were published describing systems (real or hypothetical) with most or (preferably) all of the features in 1999. That would be a strong case for prior art. Showing that each of the features listed in the claims existed separately in products isn’t sufficient; we need to show that that a system with these features was either already in existence or close enough to be obvious at the time.

I knew that WebMentor, first created in 1997 has all but one of the features (chat-room) and I may be wrong. I'll be contacting Avilar to see if they can show prior art.

Stephen Downes has very an extensive report on this.