CALIOPOLIS

Austin Groothuis works for CALI (as do I), but he is also a 2L at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

His blog has been attracting some positive attention (follow link and see the above graphic) and I realized that I was remiss in mot mentioning this myself after the appropriate disclosures.

The blog is loosely aimed at folks considering law school, but Austin can’t help but write from his own experiences in law school. This is all to the good and he has been doing a great job of posting insightful and honest advice.

He has also put out an open call to any law students or pre-law students for any questions or advice that they want. Brave man.

Seriously, take him up on his offer. We have tons of contacts and the CALI staff has over 50 years of experience working in legal education … or like the saying goes…

We’re from CALI and we’re here to help.

Back in 2000, I was reserching content management systems for a legal aid website project I was working on and did some pretty heavy digging into ArsDigita’s ACS system. (that might be redundant as I believe the ‘S’ stands for system).

Anyhow, this system was developed by Phillip Greenspun of "Phil and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing" and was used at MIT for some of the courses that he taught. If you have not read this book, it is well worth the time. Even after all these years (published originally in 1998), it has great insights and is enjoyable reading for website developers. The link leads to the free online version of the book, but buy the full-color, paper version – it’s full of beautiful photos taken by Greenspun.

I found a blurb from April of 1998 at the WayBack Machine on Archive.org that describes some functions of ACS and refers to version 1.4 (which would imply that it goes back further).

"…

example: participants in a class

If you have a bunch of people taking a high school or university course,the ACS can serve as the hub for distributing course materials,collecting questions, and fostering discussion. It has in fact beenused this way at MIT, Harvard, and lots of schools that aren’t inCambridge!

Anyway, the lessons from our experience are that the ACS works as wellas any other collaboration software for supporting folks in a class.Just be sure that they have a reason for using a Web service in thefirst place.

Architecturally you could set up everyone at a university in one bigACS. Then use the user-groups module to define various group types.The most important structures in a modern university are committees. Soyou’d have those sorts of groups to accrete administrators. Then you’dprobably want to think about a group of type "course". Students andteachers in a particular course would be lumped together in a user groupand could have a private discussion group…."

Emphasis mine.

Instead of "various group types" think "roles" which seemed to figure prominently in many of the claims in the BlackBoard patent.

I will get this into the Wikipedia History of VLE‘s later this week. That’s where the community seems to be coalescing for a single location for this kind of stuff.

Phillip Greenspun blogs here. I’ll bet he would make an excellent expert witness.

Need to get back into "law school mode"? Here are some podcasts that are up your alley.

Elmer pointed me to the NPR-sponsored website for Justice Talking where they post MP3s of shows that are law-related.

Recent programs posted include…

• Immigration Reform
• Collecting DNA from the Accused: Will it Help or Hurt Law Enforcement?
• The Roberts Court: What Can This Term Tell Us About the Future of the Court?
• Are Lawyers Necessary in all Cases?

… and others.

For you lawyers, you can get CLE credit for listening to the shows via a link on the site.

The Inquirer had a story today about Rambus’ run-in with the Federal Trade Commission.

"…THE US FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (FTC) is to file an antitrust case against Rambus Inc, a company which licenses its intellectual property to others.The basis of the case, according to commissioners, is that Rambus allegedly persuaded the JEDEC standards group to take up technology that it was filing patents for without telling it…"

Emphasis mine.

What does this have to do with BlackBoard?

Probably nothing, but it made me think about the timing of BlackBoard’s patent and the evaluation being done by the Department of Justice on the BlackBoard/WebCT merger.

From the patent, it looks like it was published on January 17, 2006.

From a press release on BlackBoard’s website dated February 6, 2006 (three weeks later), they announced…

"…Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB), announced today that it has been given clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice to complete the merger of Blackboard and WebCT, Inc. The United States Department of Justice has terminated its review of Blackboard’s proposed acquisition of WebCT, Inc. …"

The merger between BlackBoard and WebCT deserved federal scrutiny because it was reported that it would result in a single company having up to 81% of the Course Management System market.

So my question is … Did BlackBoard tell the DOJ about the patent that they got three weeks before the DOJ terminated its evaluation?

If not, then the story from the Inquirer which started this line of thought becomes rather relevant, I believe. The Feds don’t like it when you forget to tell them something.

There is another aspect to this as well.

BlackBoard originally applied for their patent back in 1999, Iassume the work they were doing before that went into the patentapplication.

On BlackBoard’s website, under a description of the company’s history, is this quote…

"…Blackboard was founded in 1997 with a vision totransform the Internet into a powerful environment for the educationexperience. Originally, the Company provided consulting services tothe IMS Global Learning Consortium…"

Emphasis mine, again.

So, about the time they were consulting with IMS, they might also have been working on the software that they eventually came to patent.

Here’s a description of IMS from their website…

"…IMS/GLC is a global, nonprofit, member organization that providesleadership in shaping and growing the learning industry throughcommunity development of standards, promotion of high impactinnovation, and research into best practices.

…IMS includes more than 50 Contributing Members and affiliates…"

Emphasis mine, again.

According to the Inquirer story, Rambus was working with the JEDEC memory standard committees and applying for patents as the same time, but they never told the Federal Trade Commission about it.

BlackBoard was consulting with IMS, which "…providesleadership … throughcommunity development of standards,…" at approximately the same time they were working on the software that they later patented.

Did they tell the DOJ?

I don’t know.

The Inquirer has the PDF (no story yet) of the law suit filed by BlackBoard on July 26, 2006 (same day they got their patent) for patent infringement. So much for goodwill, it’s going to be war and Desire2Learn is the front line.

This lawsuite has huge ramifications for the educational community – NOT just he ed-tech crowd either. On the front page of BlackBoard’s website is this blurb…

"…The Blackboard Academic Suiteâ„¢ enables institutions to embrace the full power of the Internet with access to any learning resource at any time from any place…"

They should probably add a qualifier now. How can you access the "full power of the Internet" if you are dealing with litigation fears and limitations of choice as a result?

This is just plain bad for everyone including BlackBoard and they really should re-think their strategy.

Well, the clock is ticking for BlackBoard and whether they are going to come out with cease and desist letters blazing or do something intelligent that will endear them to the edu-blogosphere.

By the way, here is the link to the actual patent on the USPTO website.

Evidence of searches for prior art are starting to popup. Here’s a quote from the comments to a FortnightlyMailing post…

"…There is certainly clear prior art from the very early 1990s. Details follow.

From the historical perspective I date the development of "modern"bulletin board systems in e-learning from 1991. When we started to useFirstClass at the Open University on the JANUS project, within a fewmonths many of the so-called "standard" features had been developed -quasi-geographical virtual campus representation, assignmentsubmission, student-only areas, chat, etc…"

The patent seems to have been applied for in 1999 which would make anything in 1998 fair game for prior art. I am not a lawyer, but I recall doing some work with a couple of companies doing similar things around that time.

A very little digging around in the Internet WayBack Machine finds this website from MadDuck Software – makers of Web Course In A Box…

It’s dated June 12, 1998 and MadDuck was certainly doing a lot of the same things mentioned in the patent. Here’s the link.

A little closer to my legal education home, I could swear that West, Inc. had launched TWEN (The West Education Network) that far back and sure enough…

This is dated January 10, 1998. Here’s the link.

If I recall, West launched TWEN as a competitor to MadDuck which had a deal to distribute their software to law schools via Lexis. That means MadDuck goes back to 1997 and maybe even 1996.

I would guess that the evidence will mount quickly since things like this move in Internet time and so if BlackBoard is going to salvage any goodwill out of this, they better say something soon.

From Wikipedia, we learn…

"…Goodwill is … an important accounting concept that describes the value of a business entity not directly attributable to its tangible assets and liabilities…"

So Goodwill is something that a company wants to nurture, grow and be able to claim on its bottom line.

Whengoodwill is negative, it’s a liability – literally and it looks likeBlackBoard has not handled it’s recent patent acquisition in a veryvalue-generating way.

Some quotes from around the edu-blogosphere…

David Carter-Tod writes…

"…Frankly, they should be ashamed. It’s a tissue of fabrication…"

Stephen Downes writes…

"…This would be funny if it weren’t so ridiculous:…"

Rick’s Cafe Canadien writes…

"…BlackBoard or Dr. Evil?…"

Peter Schilling writes…

"…Blackboard seems to have a long-term strategy of … tryingto keep others out of the field by getting an absurdly broad patent forcommon uses of technology…"

Now, it may be that BlackBoard will soon come out with a press release saying that they are not going to enforce this patent or not going to go after Moodle, Sakai, Drupal, TWEN or any of the other open-source or commercial Learning Management/Course Management Systems (LMS/CMS) out there.

If so, they should have done that first. Many of the comments around the blogosphere are especially upset with the USPTO and they are couching their reaction to BlackBoard with careful terms to see if they do the right thing. There is a possibility for a big payoff in goodwill yet.

But time is running out. The mere announcement of this patent has drawn considerable vituperation on BlackBoard and as the meme spreads, it gets harder to reverse. Badwill is kind of sticky.

I surely see the need for a large corporation to patent its intellectual property. Heck, BlackBoard may have gotten this patent to defend against patent trolls who would pull the same thing against them that the educational community fears BlackBoard is going to pull now.

So the question for stockholders is whether the value of the patent is greater than the lost goodwill demonstrated by the comments above?

I doubt it.

The patent may not even withstand prior art and validity challenges and you can bet it will be challenged if BlackBoard gets all aggressive in this space. If they lose the patent, they lose twice – no patent and no goodwill.

Will Bb be heros or chumps? Stay tuned.

Jonathan Zittrain of the Berkman Center and also Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford University struck it rich recently. Rich in the sense that he got his latest article, "The Generative Internet" published on Groklaw where that large, voracious and didactic community tore into it in all sorts of interesting ways.

I confess to being a Groklaw addict and avid follower of the writings of Pamela, "PJ" Jones since she started Groklaw some years ago (gosh is it that long?). The main focus of the blog has been the SCO v. IBM litigation where you can find every single filing posted (in text and PDF) and long, circuitous and almost always insightful discussion of every single point of law that crazy case has taken.

PJ single-handedly created the notion of "open source litigation" where everything is visible, questioned, verified, researched and discussed. Regular followers of Groklaw have received a graduate level education in all sorts of legal issues, complex litigation tactics, intellectual property and beyond.

There are plenty of lawyers present daily as well as geeks and greybeards (the SCO case careened right into the old UNIX/ATT/BSD litigation long ago) and they provide expert commentary, war stories, personal recollection and hilarious commentary on the train wreck that is the SCO case.

Now take that gang and toss in a scholarly law review-type article and the results are fascinating.

If Professor’s Zittrain’s skin is thick enough (and having met the chap, I believe he will see this for the jackpot of riches it is), he will be able to reap a whirlwind of insight and market-testing for a paper that looks like it wants to be a full-length book someday.

I can’t comment on the paper itself – I’m still slogging through it and from the reactions of the non-lawyers and non-law professors (see the graphic above), I am not the only one slogging.

Still, as an invited guest of PJ’s, many of the responses are reasoned, intelligent and innovative. PJ’s community is rich in intelligence and intellectual diversity and pretty polite. (PJ has ruthlessly enforced a no-profanity policy in the comments which makes her site one of the purest pleasures to read).

Politeness aside, this gang is a tough audience and they make for a rich learning experience for Zittrain or any other law professor who wants to write to a wider audience.

Back in the day when I was running a computer center at a lawschool, the months of July and August were some of the busiest monthsgetting things ready for the new batch of students.

One ofthe things that I loaded onto our local area network was any tutorialor help document I could find that would answer students questionsbefore they came knocking on my door.

Publisher Visibooks offers "screen quality" versions of its picture books for free download here.

Here’s a screenshot …

These aren’t super-comprehensive "bibles" for power users, but they might be plenty handy for the newbie law students struggling with their software and those are the ones that need the most and simplest help – which these books provide.

Theseare PDF versions of their "print quality" or printed books that arelicened under Creative Commons, but if law students come knocking forhelp on any of these topics…

• computer basics
• Windows XP
• Mac OS X Tiger
• Linspire Five-O
• Palm Devices
• microsoft office
• Access 2003
• Excel 2003
• PowerPoint 2003
• Word 2003
• Publisher 2003
• openoffice.org
• Base 2.0
• Calc 2.0
• Impress 2.0
• Writer 2.0
• web layout
• Dreamweaver 8
• FrontPage 2003
• HTML & CSS
• web graphics
• Photoshop CS2
• Fireworks 8
• Photoshop Elements 4.0
• web programming
• MySQL Basics
• PHP Basics
• PERL Basics

…you can point them to http://inpics.net/ to get some help.

The front page of the CALI website has a place that randomly displays comments we get from law students. There is a place for students to submit new comments (link here) and there is also a link on every single CALI lessons that sends us an email right from within the lesson itself.

Many of the comments we receive are amazingly positive and tell us that the work we do with faculty authors is having a positive impact on student learning.

Here is a sample of comments we received in the past couple of weeks.

"…CALI is an excellent resource for the law student, or even, like me, the recent graduate studying for the Bar Exam. In conjunction with my regular bar study courses, which track mock-exam results by subject and topic, CALI’s topic-specific learning modules help me to focus on exactly what areas I need to in order to increase my performance stats – and to succeed on the Bar Exam…."

We don’t design CALI lessons to be specifically useful for passing the bar exam, but obviously any good legal education tool will serve that purpose. Some years back, we changed the way that CALI lessons are produced so that they are shorter and smaller for exactly the reasons that the student mentions.

"…CALI Lessons, have a way of fine tuning my skills while I am preparing for finals!!…."

This is an especially gratifying comment. You don’t often hear students speak of "fine-tuning" their skills.

"…Finally, after sifting through hundreds of pages in text books, I get to the pod cast on Parol Evidence Rule, and walah, the "intent" of the "rule" crystallizes. A breath of fresh air. Thanks! Podcast most helpful….."

This student is referring to a podcast we produced at a blog we call CALI Radio. We will be adding more interviews with law faculty that cover particularly knotty legal concepts.

"…Last semester I used CALI often. It’s a great way to keep studying when you just can’t seem to look at books anymore. The Civ Pro lesson on Party Joinder was excellent. I did it multiple times and felt very prepared for my Professor’s notoriously difficult multiple choice questions. When grades came out I got an A — Yea CALI!…."

Emphasis mine.

Here we have a student who used a single lesson multiple times. Many students don’t realize that the lessons are built with branches so that if you run the lesson multiple times, you may see different questions based on your answers.

"…CALI lessons are a great trouble-shooting device. They help me work out any remaining kinks in my understanding of a certain area before taking exams….."

Legal education is difficult and complex sometimes. This student uses CALI lessons to "troubleshoot" areas to flesh out their understanding. Exactly what they are designed to do.

"…When I walk out of an exam, the first thing I say to my peers is "total CALI" because I know I got the highest grade in the class thanks to this website….."

In this comment, the student is talking about "CALI-ing" a class which refers to the CALI Excellence for the Future Award that is given to students who receive the highest grade in the class. Over 90 law schools participate in this free program. Interested schools should contact me, John Mayer (jmayer@cali.org) to get signed up.

The award program has resulted in CALI becoming a verb in the legal education lexicon.