The D2L patent blog has been humming the past few days.

First, it looks like the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s patent claims. The patent office released a non-final action, which means it ain’t over yet as both parties can still comment before the final decision is made.

However, regardless of the claim, D2L has gone ahead and released a new version of their LE, 8.3, which President & CEO John Baker says works around the patent issues.

Our Learning Environment 8.3 underwent external third-party review
after we devoted significant resources to ensuring that 8.3 was outside
the scope of the method claims of the patent. We are confident that
this version does not infringe the asserted claims.