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Desire2Learn’s challenge of Blackboard’s e-learning patents have resulted in an initial action by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that invalidated all 44 of the Blackboard patents questioned. The action is not final, yet, and both parties have 60 days to respond. But, as eSchool News points out, the ruling raises questions about the validity of e-learning patents:

Blackboard claims that the majority of patents undergoing a reexamination of this kind are ultimately upheld, but D2L’s Baker says that Blackboard seems to be pointing to statistics from ex parte reexaminations, rather than from inter partes patent reexaminations. “The majority of inter partes [reexaminations, which D2L has filed,] have resulted in the patent being fully rejected,” he said.

USPTO figures confirm Baker’s assertion. About a quarter of all ex parte reexaminations result in the original patent being upheld, and 64 percent cause the patent holder to make changes to its patent, according to the federal patent office. Only 10 percent of ex parte actions result in the outright cancellation of a patent. But for inter partes requests, 75 percent of patents are cancelled and only 8 percent are confirmed; the rest are changed by the patent holder.

In the past, I (and others) have been highly critical of Blackboard for cornering the e-learning market by enforcing no-brainer patents where it seems that a vast library of prior works must exist. This not only hinders the development of competitive products, but also provides little incentive for Blackboard to improve their own product. Even the development of innovative uses of Blackboard’s products is discouraged. Following my post that discussed a critical flaw in Blackboard’s SafeAssign product, a leader of a software development company called with news that Blackboard’s lawyers threatened legal action if they were to continue development of a Facebook integration widget.

If Blackboard’s patents are conclusively rejected, the ruling could usher in a new era of innovation in e-learning. This case will be fascinating to follow over the next few months.

Blackboard Beyond’s Greg Ritter sent me a note announcing that “the issue [I] experienced with SafeAssign that enabled [me] to gain access to a SafeAssign user’s paper has been resolved. Blackboard released a new version of the SafeAssign central service as well as a new version of the SafeAssign Building Block last Tuesday, November 20.”

Since the issue has been fixed, I am now de-redacting my previous post on the issue.

I received a call this afternoon from a third-party developer who confirmed the Blackboard Beyond Initiative is working aggressively on a fix for the critical flaw in its SafeAssign product reported at EF on Tuesday. The good news is that student data is no longer being distributed into the wild. This is a huge gain for students and faculty concerned about privacy.

The quick turnaround on this issue merits extra credit. In the interim, SafeAssign’s grade gets changed to an “Incomplete” until the fix is released.

After reading yesterday’s post on SafeAssign at least 31 times today, Blackboard Beyond Initiative product director Greg Ritter (who also blogs) called me to voice Blackboard’s objections over sharing information on the software flaw that broadcasts submitted students’ papers across the Internet. I thought a personal call from the company was much better than receiving an intimidating letter from Sutherland, Asbill, & Brennan (check out what they sent to others in the past!). Kudos go to Blackboard for this new approach to public engagement.

During our conversation, it occurred to me that due to the longstanding flaw, Blackboard might be violating students’ rights (inadvertently) under FERPA. Rather than become an accessory, I decided to temporarily redact information in the post until Blackboard implements a fix (next week, they promise). Once the problem is fixed, the redacted text will be restored.

The cheerfulness among undergraduates at my institution has transformed suddenly into overt displays of despair and depression. This can only signal one thing: midterm grades are coming in.

Another sign midterms are being graded: the Education Futures access.log has been receiving many referral hits from websites claiming to thwart plagiarism.

Students, please note that submitting your papers on sites such as SafeAssign (by Blackboard) is not safe, and in no way protects your privacy. Why? Because I can read your papers by visiting referral URLs left by your instructors on this site’s log. SafeAssign does nothing to hinder me from reading your work. It’s all open for the world to view. The SafeAssign FAQ states, “Blackboard does not claim any ownership rights on the content submitted to SafeAssign.” So, why do they redistribute it to the world?

A student at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Nursing wrote an outstanding community health assessment of a Chicago neighborhood. I got to read her work in its entirety because SafeAssign has assigned a 7% chance that she lifted the following text from an EF post on China:

Healthy People 2010. (2007). Adults with Congestive Heart Failure as Principal Diagnosis, 1997. National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), Retrieved November 1, 2007, from http://www.healthyPeople.gov/Document/HTML/Volume1/12Heart.htm.

Hozawa, A., Folsom, A., Sharrett A., Chambless L. (2007). Absolute and attributable risks of cardiovascular disease incidence in relation to optimal and borderline risk factors: comparison of African American with White subjects- Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study [Electronic Version]. Archives Of Internal Medicine , 167(6), 537-539.

Sharma, S., O’Keefe, SJ. (2007). Environmental influences on the high mortality from colorectal cancer in African Americans[ Electronic Version]. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 83(983), 583-589.

Why SafeAssign thinks there’s a 7% chance she plagiarized that from EF baffles me.

The student gets an A from EF for her outstanding work. SafeAssign gets an F for failing to protect students’ best interests through a shoddy, insecure product.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports their take of the top ten trends affecting education in 2005:

1. The browser-based application
2. Firefox
3. Wikipedia’s news reporting
4. The $100 laptop
5. Podcasting
6. A renewed debate on what students are doing on the Internet
7. OpenOffice.org 2.0
8. Web 2.0
9. Moodle
10. Blackboard’s takeover of WebCT

Read the original article.