Blackboard Inc. is the market leader in providing educational institutions with course management software that allows interaction between students and teachers over the Internet. Desire2Learn Inc. is Blackboard’s primary commercial competitor. This appeal arises from an action by Blackboard against Desire2Learn for infringement of Blackboard’s U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138 (“the ’138 patent”), which claims an Internet-based educational support system and related methods.
The ’138 patent is not the inventors’ first work in the field of education-support software. In 1996, while they were college students, several of the same inventors developed a software product called CourseInfo 1.5, which allowed for online management of information relating to individual courses. In the CourseInfo system, each course had its own website, and students and instructors would log in to each course separately. In 1999, the inventors merged their company with Blackboard. Another prior art course management system, which was available by 1997, is the Serf system, developed by a professor at the University of Delaware. Like CourseInfo 1.5, the Serf system provided a way for students and teachers to interact through the Internet.Upon issuance of the ’138 patent, Blackboard filed an infringement action against Desire2Learn in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. After a Markman hearing, the district court entered partial summary judgment forDesire2Learn, holding claims 1-35 of the patent invalid for indefiniteness. The court then conducted a jury trial that addressed whether Desire2Learn had infringed claims 36-38 of the patent; Desire2Learn asserted by way of defense that those claims were anticipated and would have been obvious in light of prior art that predated the patent’s priority date of 1999.
An important issue at trial was whether the asserted claims of the ’138 patent required that a person using the claimed method be able to use a “single login” to access multiple courses and multiple roles in those courses. Blackboard touted its method as allowing a person to use a single login to obtain access to all the courses of interest to that person and to obtain different levels of access to the course materials depending on that person’s role in each course. For example, Blackboard asserted that its claimed method would allow a graduate student who was a student in one course and a teacher in another to use a single login to obtain access to both courses and to obtain access to the materials for each course according to the graduate student’s role in each.
At trial, Blackboard took the position that the method of claims 36-38 required that the user have the capacity to access multiple courses and multiple roles through a single login. Desire2Learn took the position that Blackboard’s claims did not require such access through a single login, and that the claims were therefore invalid in light of the prior art. The jury found that claims 36-38 were neither anticipated nor obvious, and that Desire2Learn had infringed those claims.
Desire2Learn then filed motions for judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”), contending that claims 36-38 were invalid for both anticipation and obviousness. The court denied the motions. In so doing, the court agreed with Blackboard that the asserted claims required that the recited method permit access to multiple courses and roles through a single login.
In appeal No. 2008-1368, Desire2Learn argues that claims 36-38 are invalid in light of the prior art and that its system does not infringe those claims. In appeal No. 2008-1396, Blackboard cross-appeals from the district court’s ruling, on summary judgment, that claims 1-35 are indefinite. In a separate appeal, No. 2008-1548, Blackboard appeals from the district court’s denial of an award of costs related to certain discovery expenses.
