eSchoolNews:
<blockquote>You could call it, simply, “Round One” for Blackboard Inc.
At least, that’s the term that people in the Kitchener, Ontario, offices of Desire2Learn Inc. (D2L) were using after a federal district-court jury in Texas hit their small Canadian company with a $3.1 million judgment for infringing the patent rights of Blackboard, a much larger American company that dominates the commercial market for course-management software.

D2L President and CEO John Baker told reporters he was shocked by the jury’s decision.

In a related matter, District Court Judge Ron Clark, who presided at the trial, ruled against a D2L claim that Blackboard’s patent could not be enforced because the company had withheld information from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which approved Blackboard’s patent application in January 2006.

“I think we’re all disappointed,” Diane Lank, a D2L lawyer, said on Monday, “but this is Round One. I don’t think that anyone looking at this thought the case would end at the jury level.”

The implication from D2L is that the fight is not over by a long shot. But from Blackboard’s perspective, the verdict vindicates its argument that the methodology of its software–allowing individual users to access multiple courses through a single log-in procedure–constitutes a unique invention whose patent its smaller competitor improperly violated.

Matthew H. Small, Blackboard’s chief counsel, said Monday that his company had proved its case before “a very sophisticated jury” whose members included well-educated people with experience in academic computing.

Lank said, however, that D2L was “quite likely” to appeal the verdict, which the jury reached on Feb.22 after several hours of deliberation at the end of a two-week trial.</blockquote>