Blackboard Rebounds Back a Bunch O Steps

USPTO to re-examine Blackboard patent filing

Blackboards patent has gone back to the drawing board, with the US Patent and Trademark Office having ordered a re-examination thanks to a filing by the Software Freedom Law Center. Nice to know that regardless of how dysfunctional and stupid the system of software patents is, there is some recourse. As Terry Reese suggests, it is hard to understand why a company like Blackboard risks the bad press and lost customers for something so obviously not patentable. If nothing else is gives the blogosphere something to talk about :-) Now, can we assume that during the up-to-2 years it may take for the review that Blackboard will stop sending letters to LMS vendors?

Scraped from Harold Jarche