blackboard patent poll results

thanks to everyone who participated in the flash poll regarding the granting of a broadbased patent to blackboard who then in turned filed a patent violation lawsuit against desire2learn. in my post blackboard's patent, i argued that while blackboard's ethics might be in question, technically and legally that had acted within their rights in both filing for a patent and, one granted, seeking to defend their patent against infringers. i further argued that it was the patent office who bears the blame in this circumstance for granting a patent that is far to broad and clearly has no understanding of software or learning products and processes.

as you can see from the summary, a large majority of the respondents (63.3%) concur that the patent office is the real scoundrel in this case.  from what i've read in the blogosphere regarding this patent and lawsuit, Id say this is pretty representative of the general attitude amongst learning professionals.

14.3% of the respondants were most concerned about the impact on elearning when they marked "whether or not it's good for blackboard, it's terrible for elearning."  10.2% agreed with me that "whether or not I like it, it's good business for blackboard.

i find it interesting that no one felt this issue has grey areas ("there's some good and some bad in it"). although 4.1% indicated that they were still waiting to learn more about the situation.

8.2% of the respondants feel that this situation is great all around.

perhaps the biggest statistic is that 95.9% percent of the respondants had very quickly come to a decision about whether this was a positive (18.4%) or a negative (77.6%) situation. 

thanks to everyone who participated in this poll.