Ten Reasons Why you Should Care About the Blackboard Patent: Monopolies Mean Higher Prices

Resting by stelj.

Reason #1: Monopoly Power Over the last decade Blackboard Inc. has achieved monopoly status in the higher education e-learning market by eliminating all viable competition. In 2002 it acquired an emerging competitor Prometheus and promptly killed the product. In 2006 it acquired WebCT with the intention of killing off the product line and swallowing the customer base of its only major competitor. By using an illegitimate software patent as the basis for a lawsuit, Blackboard has in its bullseye Desire2Learn, a rapidly growing Canadian company and the recent recipient of a prestigious Deloitte Technology Fast 50 award for growth, excellence and innovation. Blackboard can and will employ the same patent weapon to bludgeon any and all commercial competitors who pose a threat to its monopoly status in the higher education e-learning market. (I have argued elsewhere ("Blackboard's Fabian Strategy Against Open Source") that Blackboard's war against open source will follow a different strategy.)

Will Blackboard prices go up? They already have. Will they go up in the future? What do you think?

Note: Blackboard revenues have increased over the past five years at an impressive clip not through new sales but through targeted acquisitions of competitors and complementary products which allow the company to achieve strategic lock-in of its customer base.