Dr Ray Mercer's evidence for Desire2Learn about prior art

The US Patent Office is currently re-examining the e-learning patent it awarded Blackboard early in 2006, following Desire2Learn's and the Software Freedom Law Centre's successful inter partes and ex parte re-examination requests. Dr Ray Mercer's 26 June 2008 evidence for Desire2Learn [450 kB PDF]  - part of the supporting material to Desire2Learn's Comments by third party requester to patent owner's response in inter partes reexamination [570 kB PDF] - is not for the feint hearted. Ideally it needs to be read in parallel with Dr Mark Jones's evidence for Blackboard [320 kB PDF], to which it is, in effect, a response.

Step by step, Mercer sets out the extent to which, in his opinion, Patent Number 6,988,138 was anticipated by prior art, and thus should never have been granted by the US Patent Office. Mercer concentrates in his evidence on several different sources of prior art, including Serf, Top Class 2.0 and Virtual Campus (early on-line learning systems).

Most interesting to me was his consideration of the EDUCOM/NLII Instructional Management Systems Specifications Document Version 0.5 (April 29, 1998), which I wrote about at the end of August 2006. The feeling I get from reading Mercer's evidence is that Desire2Learn might have benefited from it during Blackboard's infringement case earlier this year (which Desire2Learn lost, comprehensively); and I'm puzzled as to why it was not obtained earlier in the process. (My eye has been rather off the Blackboard/Desire2Learn ball in recent months, and it is entirely possible that I missed an earlier Mercer document.)