Comments on: Jim Farmer's Eyewitness Account of the Blackboard Patent Trial http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2008/02/28/justice-not-in-this-land/ Technologies for Learning, Thinking and Collaborating Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:31:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: pipwerks.com » Blog Archive » More on the Blackboard vs Desire2Learn verdict http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2008/02/28/justice-not-in-this-land/#comment-1385 pipwerks.com » Blog Archive » More on the Blackboard vs Desire2Learn verdict Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:22:32 +0000 http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2008/02/28/justice-not-in-this-land/#comment-1385 [...] Scott Leslie was as incredulous as me when reading Jim Farmer’s account of the trial. From Scott’s post Jim Farmer’s Eyewitness Account of the Blackboard Patent Trial It is not difficult to see a picture here (and I want to be clear here, because I think Jim did a fine job being as impartial as possible, that these are my interpretations) of not just “Justice for Sale” but “Patent Law Judgements as Economic Diversification Program.” It’s bad enough to have to read this about Blackboard’s (god how I even cringe to write that name) expert witness: Expert witnesses always are asked about their fees. When asked how much he had earned, Mark Jones was unable to give an answer. He said he had spent “hundreds of hours” and gave his rate as $325 per hour. (I thought he said $375, but court documents have the lower amount). He also said he had received $170,000 in fees from Blackboard before the end of 2007 as his [IRS Form] 1099 showed. It is likely he will have been paid more than $300,000 for his testimony when the trial is complete. [...] [...] Scott Leslie was as incredulous as me when reading Jim Farmer’s account of the trial. From Scott’s post Jim Farmer’s Eyewitness Account of the Blackboard Patent Trial It is not difficult to see a picture here (and I want to be clear here, because I think Jim did a fine job being as impartial as possible, that these are my interpretations) of not just “Justice for Sale” but “Patent Law Judgements as Economic Diversification Program.” It’s bad enough to have to read this about Blackboard’s (god how I even cringe to write that name) expert witness: Expert witnesses always are asked about their fees. When asked how much he had earned, Mark Jones was unable to give an answer. He said he had spent “hundreds of hours” and gave his rate as $325 per hour. (I thought he said $375, but court documents have the lower amount). He also said he had received $170,000 in fees from Blackboard before the end of 2007 as his [IRS Form] 1099 showed. It is likely he will have been paid more than $300,000 for his testimony when the trial is complete. [...]

]]> By: charlie http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2008/02/28/justice-not-in-this-land/#comment-1384 charlie Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:32:36 +0000 http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2008/02/28/justice-not-in-this-land/#comment-1384 "And how far along are you on your open source CMS? (or even better, on your loosely coupled teaching platform?)" Yes. This worries me a little, although I wonder how effectively they can prosecute those of us using tools other than open source LMS's such as Sakai and Moodle? For instance, since I use Drupal which is a more general content management system, I'm the one putting the pieces together--plugging in the modules--and configuring the system so that it becomes an LMS. That would seem to make me or my institution liable, not Drupal. It would be worse than the RIAA file sharing suit PR fiasco for Blackboard to go after single teachers or individual institutions. “And how far along are you on your open source CMS? (or even better, on your loosely coupled teaching platform?)”

Yes. This worries me a little, although I wonder how effectively they can prosecute those of us using tools other than open source LMS’s such as Sakai and Moodle? For instance, since I use Drupal which is a more general content management system, I’m the one putting the pieces together–plugging in the modules–and configuring the system so that it becomes an LMS. That would seem to make me or my institution liable, not Drupal. It would be worse than the RIAA file sharing suit PR fiasco for Blackboard to go after single teachers or individual institutions.

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