McDermott Will & Emery scored a win for its client Blackboard Inc., a D.C.-based software company, in a patent suit against Desire2Learn Inc. Both companies are education software developers, and Blackboard argued that Desire2Learn had infringed its patents for software for online courses.
Last Friday, a jury in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas awarded Blackboard $3.1 million in back damages. Blackboard was seeking $17 million, but royalties could be awarded going forward. A hearing on the matter is set for March 10.
Michael Nadel, a McDermott partner in D.C., was the lead attorney on the case for Blackboard. Fay Morisseau, a McDermott lawyer in California, handled the trial. Attorneys in Foley & Lardner’s Chicago office led Desire2Learn’s representation.
According to Blackboard's 10k for 2007, they'd already spent 6.1M prosecuting this case as of Dec 2007 (and likely incurred millions more in Jan/Feb) - so...winning $3.1 mil is a victory???
Posted by: | February 29, 2008 at 03:08 PM