I picked up on a story today about a Washington D.C. company being awarded a patent related to e-learning. What caught my eye is they sued a Canadian company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Desire2Learn the same day the patent was announced. The York Dispatch article does a pretty good job of covering the online debate that has grown since the announcement.

Blackboard Inc. has been awarded a patent establishing its claims to some of the basic features of the software that powers online education. Waterloo, Ontario-based Desire2Learn said it was surprised by the lawsuit but will defend itself vigorously. No court date has been set. Via York Dispatch

As the article points out:

The dispute is part of a contentious area of the law concerning patents awarded not just on invented objects, but on ideas and processes. In theory, patents can be awarded on a whole range of ideas as long as they are "non-obvious" and the Patent Office sees no evidence they have been described before. Patents have been awarded for everything from types of credit card offers to methods of teaching a golf swing. Now, the issue is surfacing in the growing field of e-learning.

I wonder if this could ever have happened to inventors like Edison. I wonder how many of his 1,093 patents were 'ideas'? I do not know for sure but my hunch would be that they were all 'objects'.

In my opinion a patent, copyright, or trademark are only as good as your plan to defend them in court. If you are going to invest in protecting any intellectual property I would make sure you have a plan and the money to defend it - hiring the best intellectual property lawyers cost real money.