Court Re-affirms Invalidation of First 35 Blackboard Patent Claims

This just in from the D2L patent blog:

On August 4, we announced that Magistrate Judge Hines had issued his Memorandum Opinion Construing Claim Terms of the United States Patent No. 6,988,138 (the “Markman” decision). We noted that the decision was subject to procedural appeal. The decision rendered claims 1-35 invalid. On August 22, we posted the Objections that Blackboard filed to the Memorandum Opinion, as well as the Conditional Objections that we filed. Finally, on August 30, we posted the respective responses to the Objections and Conditional Objections.

Today, we received notice that the Court issued its Order Denying Plaintiff’s Objections to Memorandum and Order Construing Claim Terms of the United States Patent No. 6,988,138. In the Order – as indicated by its title – the Court, by Judge Clark, denied Blackboard’s Objections. It denied as moot our Conditional Objections. We had requested that the Court consider our Objections only if it reversed the initial Memorandum Opinion.

The bottom line: Two judges have now ruled Blackboard’s Patent Claims 1-35 are invalid because of indefiniteness of claim 1. Blackboard cannot claim infringement at trial of those claims.

We mentioned before that we were pleased with Judge Hines’ decision. Suffice it to say we are now very pleased.

Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.

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